Dive Brief:

• McGraw-Hill is conceding to critics of a political science textbook originally released in 2012 entitled Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World, who claim its maps are inaccurate and were described as "anti-Israel." 
• The maps reportedly show Israel, Gaza and the West Bank along with the "Palestinian loss of land" from 1946 to 2000, and the Amazon.com description of the book says that the work "offers students a number of lenses through which to view the world around them."
• McGraw-Hill has destroyed all copies of the book, removed the title from its website, apologized to critics and announced a refund for anyone who has already purchased the text.

Dive Insight:

The issue of Israeli and Palestinian land rights, history and ownership is controversial and multi-dimensional, and textbook distributors and authors should rightly present more than one perspective on contested issues such as this one. 

The book is described on Amazon as "an integrated print and digital content program geared toward undergraduate students taking a first-time international relations course," and its authors are Mark Boyer, Natalie Hudson, and Michael Butler. All are highly regarded academics, none have publicly commented. A second revised edition is listed for release in 2020.

Textbook content has become political in recent days. Notably, in Texas, the Board of Education voted 8-7 to reject a proposal that would have allowed a panel of university professors to fact-check McGraw-Hill textbooks after a controversy involving books that contained inaccuracies including one social studies text that referred to slaves as "workers."  That decision is part of a long Texas history involving the Board of Ed revamping book content to fit religious and moral ideals.