I went and got a 1962 printing of the first edition of the classic physics textbook by Halliday and Resnick. I only got the first volume, but the topics in that volume are the ones that I have the most experience teaching. In many ways I actually feel better about the present, because the end-of-chapter problems are actually not so different from today. They are harder, but only slightly harder, and the amount of calculus used is actually not much greater than in today's books. All of this has happened before and has happened again.
On the other hand, the first edition is actually readable, not being overloaded with side-bars and graphics and other distractions. It's hard to blame Kids These Days for not reading the books when we've worked so hard to make them unreadable.
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