TITLE: I need help finding a rigorous precalculus textbook
QUESTION [13 upvotes]: I dislike modern textbooks; their cookie-cutter approach and appearance, over reliance on breaking things down into little boxes, the general spoon-feeding they engender and most of all the poor exposition (in my opinion). I feel that reading a mathematics text is a skill in itself, a skill that becomes lost if one subsists on these "modern" books and the bite-sized morsels of knowledge they impart. 
I'm in need of a thorough and dry pre-calculus text that will prove worthwhile to work through. I'm not looking for a laundry of list of definitions and theorems. I want as much rigour as a textbook at this level can allow, however not at the expense of clarity. 
I understand that the better textbooks were released in 1950-1960s, or perhaps even before then, so I do not mind textbooks that aren't "modern" – the earlier the better.

REPLY [2 votes]: I think you will probably like any of the introductory books by Rey Pastor. The issue there is that he was Spanish, so you won't probably be able to find a book by him in English. I have the three volumes of his Calculus course, and it's the most comprehensive book I've ever seen on the subject.
A book I like that has a small introduction including some pre-calculus concepts is Calculus by Tom Apostol. I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for, I suppose you're looking for a complete book on the subject.