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[OT] algebra text?



Hi --

I know this is off-topic, but I'm stuck and I was hoping some
folks on this list could give me a hand. I've been dealing
with a kid who is taking ninth grade "algebra 1, algebra 2".
By some measures he's doing fine: he's getting high As, verging
on A+. But he complains constantly about the course. He says
he's not learning anything ... and I agree with him, on the
grounds that his knowledge of basic algebra facts is alarminly
thin. (How he can get high As without learning much of anything
might be the subject for an interesting conversation some day,
but not today, please.)

He also complains about the textbook, saying it is a "tossed
salad of examples" with no explanations ... and I mostly
agree with that, too ... and that forms the main topic of this
note. We're talking about
_Algebra 1_ by Larson, Boswell, and Kanold
I found lots and lots of examples, with astonishingly little
explanation of what the ideas are and how the ideas might be
related to one another, and also very little formalism. By
way of example, there is a section on fitting straight lines
through scattered data, and the only instruction is to find
the "best" line, with no discussion of what might make one
line better than another! (Also there is no mention of the
fact that it might help to use a _transparent_ straightedge.)

I've seen some math books that were justly criticized as
being too "dry", with not enough examples ... but this
book is far too "wet".

I went to amazon.com and sure enough this book got a number
of rotten reviews ... but the other books in the same
category got even worse reviews. Eeek!

So ....

-- Does anybody have any suggestions or recommendations?
What do they use at your school? Are the customers
happy with it?

-- Would anybody care to comment on the Algebra DVD set
from the Standard Deviants? (It gets good reviews, but
I haven't seen it myself.)

-- Are there perhaps _college_ algebra books I should be
looking at, i.e. something that is simultaneously
introductory yet systematic?