The dwindling cadre of academics who try to hold the line on standards have a particularly rough time of it when choosing textbooks. “Every semester I have to pick a new book and I have to pick the least bad book and it’s really depressing,” Suffolk County Community College professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. says. “You need a good stiff drink.” “Other conservative academics from across the country have the same problem.” Dr. Woods teaches history at Suffolk, which is affiliated with the State University of New York. His partial solution to the textbook dilemma was to write his own...