Teaching is often an isolated activity, with experience and intuition the only sources to spur improvement. One way to move teaching from trial-and-error to a systematic effort to apply research-based strategies is by reading pedagogical literature. Pedagogical literature comes in two varieties: general and discipline-specific. As college faculty identify strongly with their disciplines, those who read the literature on effective teaching often rely on discipline-specific sources. This article aims to illustrate the lessons that can be learned from reading the general literature and reviews a sample of the available books on effective teaching.