The Great Courses

If you google "The Great Courses," you reach a website that sells university lectures on a variety of subjects for a princely sum. These include audio, video, and some additional materials. But if you subscribe to Audible, you can buy some of these lectures, in audio only and without any additions, for only a few bucks (or one credit on a subscription plan).

I just finished the History of the United States, Second Edition. Wow! For all its 42+ hours, 84 lectures and three professors, it is "merely" an overview of US history from pre-colonial times to about 2004 or so. At once I can see many parallels between the US and Rome, but one would see such parallels among any rising civilizations as well. Where the parallels break down it's usually in America's favor. For example, the US does not go into bouts of civil war frequently. On the other hand, Rome did a better job incorporating conquered peoples into the Empire.

Anyway, it's a great deal to get for under $20 per monthly subscription (one credit per month).

For the time being I'm moving on to another Bill Bryson book. But later I plan to go deeper into US history.

I finished a Great Courses series on "The Long XIX Century."

Historians like to divide eras without regard to the calendar. In this case the series covers events from the French Revolution (late 1790s) until the end of WWI (1918), as if it were a single very long century.

It was ok, but I never quite got into it. There are two notable things, though. One is that I often thought of "German Unification" more as "Prussia takes over the German states," which is a rather common view. Less common is this course also treats "Italian Unification" as "Piedmont conquers the Italian states." Remarkably I had missed the fact that Vittorio Emmanuel was king of Piedmont-Sardinia <blush>

The other is a single line near the wrap-up lecture at the end. The professor makes a reference to "The Short XX Century," and delimits it as covering the time from 1918 (naturally) to 1995. remarkably I'm more certain of older relevant dates than more recent ones, but I might put the end of the "Short XXth" in 1993 or so <shrug>.

What I'd like to know, too, was how many attempts were made to end WWI sooner by negotiating a peace, and why they failed. After all, unlike WWII, the Alliance powers were not driven by totalitarian regimes looking for totalitarian goals, and the Entente powers were not fighting for their lives. Once stalemate set in the Western Front and trench warfare proved intransigent, a negotiated peace was in everyone's interests.

Damm, I thought this was a golf thread
Playing golf tomorrow on a course
Excited, got a new rubber grip on my driver, the old one wore out.
Why cant this thread be about golf courses :-)

Quote: terapined

Damm, I thought this was a golf thread

Jove Forbid!! :)