A few months ago, I listened to lectures from The Teaching Company for the first time ever. That course was called History of Science, and I enjoyed it so much that I decided to give some more courses a try. I was pleased to find a nice selection of Teaching Company titles at one of the public libraries in my area, and ended up choosing a series called European History and European Lives: 1715-1914.
Taught by Jonathan Steinberg, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania, the series provides profiles of 35 of the “most influential people who lived during the 200 most difficult years in the history of the West”. The subjects of the lectures include kings, queens, scientists, entrepreneurs, politicians, and artists, and endeavor to show how these people influenced the course of history — and the world — during their lifetime.
European History and European Lives: 1715-1914 consists of 36 lectures, each lasting for about 30 minutes. The first lecture is an introduction to the course, and provides an overview of what Dr. Steinberg intends to do in the next 35 lectures. Each subsequent lecture then deals with the life of one particular person, as Steinberg tries to show how and why that person was important in a historical sense.
All 35 biographical lectures more or less follow the same pattern. First, Steinberg spends about 15 minutes setting the stage for the person whose life he is about to discuss. If it’s a king, Steinberg tells about what’s happening at court or on the international scene at the time. If it’s a scientist, Steinberg tells what’s going on in the general scientific community at the time. Second, Steinberg spends about 10-13 minutes or so talking specifically about the subject’s life and what he or she did that made a lasting impact on the world. And third, Steinberg spends the final few minutes of the lecture providing some analysis of that person’s life. Why was he or she important? Was the situation in Europe better or worse after the person left office or died?
The lectures proceed in chronological order, beginning with those who were prominent in the early 18th century (Augustus the Strong, Robert Walpole, Samuel Johnson) and ending with those who were prominent in the early 20th century (Leo Tolstoy, Alfred Dreyfus, David Lloyd George). This is an effective approach that allows students to see how some of these lives intertwined and affected each other.
Some of my favorite lectures from the course were the ones about Bismarck, Prince Metternich, Napoleon, Robespierre, George Eliot, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Marie Antionette, and Samuel Johnson. I learned quite a few things about these people that I didn’t know, and even ended up reading some more biographical materials about them after listening to these lectures.
If I had to mention one negative, I’d say that 30 minutes simply wasn’t enough time to treat the subjects adequately. After each one, I was left wanting much more, which was kind of frustrating since I then had to go to a different source to find what I needed. I understand why Dr. Steinberg had to include so much background material before actually getting to the subjects’ lives, but I gladly would have sacrificed information about the setting in order to hear more about the people.
Even so, I still thought European History and European Lives: 1715-1914 was a fantastic course. All of the people featured in the lectures were interesting and certainly worthy of inclusion. Plus, I loved Dr. Steinberg’s delivery of the material. His voice was easy to listen to, he clearly knew his stuff, and he explained everything as thoroughly as possible given the time constraints. I highly recommend this series!