Textbooks can be defined as books used by college students for their studies. Though considered by some as merely a class requirement to be bought and sold, textbooks have a rich and meaningful history. Getting acquainted with this history may be as interesting as the books, themselves.
Nowadays, a visit to a college bookstore brings dazzling images of beautifully bound textbooks, sometimes printed in four-color ink on the finest papers, lining the countless bookstore shelves like lights on a holiday tree. Students may buy these books for their class, and upon completing their course, look to the internet for a venue to sell used textbooks online. Selling books on the internet is a modern way of recycling.
Though it is well known that textbooks have been around for a very long time, at least as far back as the renaissance when some of the earlier colleges were founded, it has been suggested that the earliest books were written by ancient civilizations thousands of years ago. Writing was done on the, "paper," of ancient times: clay and leaves. When lessons were written on thinner materials such a silk, and when these lesson pages were bound and assembled, I supposed that is when they became known as, "text books."