[yaketysax]

A lot of university students are clueless about this sort of thing. If it's possible to complete the homework by just relying on lecture, then there's no reason to be reading the book. That's a common sentiment, even in some math classes.

Somebody, at some point, declared a book to be "great". And now you have a bunch of people recommending that "great" book because that's all they're familiar with (and why would this top notch faculty force us to use this book if it wasn't great anyway?). Few professors actually make an effort to structure classes in a pedagogical way.