Understanding Basic Mechanics, Workbook

Let me start by saying that I haven't read the book from cover to cover, nor have I taught out of it. Anyhow, I like the fact that it does away with all the baroque trappings of the typical physics textbook and focuses on basic principles. The workbook provides support for active learning methods, which is sorely lacking in books like Halliday. I'm just a little worried that its dry, mathematical style would not go over well with students. Also, I feel the approach is too relentlessly deductive -- students learn best by reasoning from the specific to the general, and it is wrongheaded in my opinion to claim to derive the conservation laws from Newton's laws.