It's a great idea to have "readings for the fatigued" in a textbook. Interviews, novel fragments, bit of Monty Python... they all made a difficult subject matter much clearer for their presence. Unfortunately I liked the readings better than the actual text! And I think I got more out of them too. Which is no disrespect to Pettman, he was one of my favourite lecturers back at uni and had a way of talking that was particularly characterised by clarity, as if he were only reminding you of something you already knew. His writing doesn't have quite the same reach, or perhaps that it's just I find it easier to grasp written concepts when those concepts are illustrated by imaginative example...