I recently came across a book sent to the Photography Department at GVSU called reframing photography by Rebekah Modrak with Bill Anthes (by the Routledge Group). I think it's particularly strong in two ways...they nicely break the book into two themes, theory and practice while also providing extensive online content to complement the book. Personally I feel that allowing both theory and practice to breath on their own allows photography, at the introductory level, to categorize information in such a way that allows theory to receive the importance it demands. Often times emphasis is placed on craft, or technical details, while theory and conceptual ideas are left as secondary notions. I also feel the additional online content adds more points of discussion that can be integrated back into conversations and discussions.
And yes, it does provide an opportunity to promote my own work... but in my opinion, having a resource (other than the tumblr-photographer-blog-excitment that's going around) where anyone can "discover" a new-to-them artist centered around a published book, creates a stronger foundation for photography.
Check out the site if you can. There is a series titled In Their Own Words which allows artists to speak first hand about their work.
www.reframingphotography.com/
Always more to come...