Readings in Modern Philosophy: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Associated Texts, Vol. 1 Book

This was my first taste of pragmatism. I find the concept in itself very cool and, from the minds in this book, I think William James is my favorite. It's terribly dry, however, and truly nothing more than white male philosophy. (The cover should tip you off.) The selections provided in this book confused me a bit. In a book on pragmatism, why were there passages that seemed terribly, well, un-pragmatic? I see this on the head of the editor instead of the philosophers themselves, as if the editor considered that, since these men talked of pragmatism, then everything they wrote must be pragmatically-inclined. I say otherwise.