Photoshop :: Scan Text Image Convert To B/W

I received a TIF image with 5 pages built in to the single image. When I open it in PS CS it does this Pixel Aspect Ratio thing. Which seems to be fine, but I can't figure out how to view the other pages in the TIF. Since Adobe (I think), owns the TIF format as well as PSD, I assume PS has a function to not only SEE and EDIT multi-page TIF files, but also CREATE them.

So Question 1 is, how do I handle multi-page TIF documents? For reading, editing and creating them? A tutorial or help page or another site, whatever is fastest for you guys. I can't find the functions. Or recommend another app to turn 5 TIFs into a SINGLE document would be fine also.
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Second question is. I have an older scanner that is on it's way out. I have black and white text documents I need to scan and sign and E-mail. Problem is, my scanner WON'T scan in black and white! The page either comes out blank white or as black and white stripes. I CAN scan as a color, or greyscale image.
Now then, let's say I scan this doc as greyscale, as a JPG.

I open the JPG file in PS. Now the page is not B/W to begin with. The whole of the document has an off-white Grey hue to it. I want to make sure it has solid text (no gradients) because the original multi-page TIF is this way. And I want the background to be solid white and text solid black. When it first comes into PS it is greyscale with gradients on the text and a non-white color across the whole image.

How can I convert this to B/W and have good looking black text on white? Plus how do I take these five scans after converting them, and turn them back into a multi-page TIF like the original?

The other thing to note is, that I am amazed about. The original 5page TIF is only 134KB. But even with all my editing I can get as low as a single, ONE page TIF at 80KB. How in the world did they compress so far and still look so nice with so many pages!
I am hoping to edit these docs, convert to b/w and put back in a 5 page TIF, and not be far off from the original file size.
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What I have tried to far is messing with the "Mode". Changing to duotone and other stuff in that menu. I've used magic eraser to try to remove the background (but still looks like crap in and around fonts).
I've used the hue/saturation tools but that doesn't leave crisp lettering.
I can accept "some" baddies around the fonts. Seeing as how it is scanned. But one of my attempts produces pretty nasty looking fonts! Like so:

This is 516% zoom. You can see "something" needs to change to make this clearer. And artifacts still show up here and there as black dots around the document. Somehow I got it to be b/w.