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!
Now that I’m working out at a health club three times per week, I’m going through audiobooks at a faster rate than ever before. I love nothing more than to listen to a good story while I’m walking on the treadmill, so that means I’m always looking for new books to load onto my iPod. I’m much less picky about what I listen to while I workout than what I actually sit down to read, and as a result have been trying a bunch of different authors based on recommendations from friends.
If you’ve been following my book reviews for the past year or so, then you know that I’m not a big fan of the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly. A friend of mine gave me a bunch of Connelly’s books on CD, which is why I “read” them in the first place, but I haven’t been particularly impressed with the novels thus far and have had a hard time figuring out why so many people seem to like them.
The first John Grisham novel I ever read was The Firm, back in 1992 when I was in high school. It was a kind of fast-paced legal thriller that I’d never encountered before, and since I was entertaining thoughts of becoming a lawyer back then, I loved the book. From that point forward, I read just about every Grisham book I could get my hands on — right up until The Runaway Jury, which I didn’t like very much at all. A few years after that, Grisham moved away from legal thrillers, and I didn’t much like those efforts either.
These days, I mostly fill my reading time with lighter fare from the likes of Agatha Christie, John Grisham, Stephen King, and Michael Connelly. There’s nothing wrong with that, as I’ve read more than my fair share of classics over the years and need a break from the heady stuff once in a while.
Although I usually like Agatha Christie’s recurring characters (Poirot, Hastings, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppenece), I can’t really say the same about Scotland Yard’s Superintendent Battle. He has appeared in several of Christie’s novels, mostly as a secondary character in a Poirot mystery, but I’ve never gotten a specific feel for what he’s like. I can’t remember his physical description, so I have no definite picture in my mind whenever the character appears.
Books filled with political satire are typically not found on my reading list, but I’d heard so many great things about America the Book by Jon Stewart that I decided to forget my usual reservations with the genre and check this one out. After all, Stewart would be discussing current events, so his jabs at the government should be easier to understand than, say, the ones Swift took at his government in Gulliver’s Travels, right?
I was looking forward to reading The Moving Finger because it’s a Miss Marple mystery. I mentioned in my review of The Body in the Library that I was disappointed at how Miss Marple was barely even involved in the investigation. She didn’t appear in the novel until almost halfway through, and she operated on the fringes rather than taking center stage like Hercule Poirot.
Many years ago, a college professor of mine gave me a reading list of personal favorites that she wanted me to try. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco was on the list, but from everything I’d heard about the 1980 novel, it didn’t sound like something I’d be interested in. However, since I recently came across the audiobook version on cassette tapes(!) at my local library, I decided to finally give it a try. Unfortunately, the novel turned out to be everything I’d feared it would be: long-winded, full of obscure references, and boring.
I used to be a huge Stephen King fan when I was in junior high. I read all of his early stuff and was genuinely terrified by it, which of course was the reaction I was going for. But in the early 1990s, I began moving away from King (I think Needful Things was the last book I read as a new release), and didn’t go back until the 2006 novel Lisey’s Story. I enjoyed that one, mostly because it was such a departure from what King had done in the past, so I decided to give his latest novel Duma Key a try as well.
I first read Anita Shreve five years ago after a friend gave me Fortune’s Rocks while I was laid up in the hospital for a few days. I couldn’t put that book down, and though I haven’t actively sought out Shreve titles since then, I do read her from time to time. I have liked Shreve’s work more often than not, so when I recently saw the audiobook version of her 2007 novel Body Surfing available at my local library, I checked it out without even thinking twice.
As a fan of the FOX television show Bones, I decided that it would be fun to try reading one of the books that the series is based on. Before going in, I knew that the original Temperance Brennan in Kathy Reichs’ novels is vastly different from the Emily Deschanel portrayal on TV, and that the Booth character doesn’t appear at all. Moreover, I knew that the setting of the novels was not Washington, D.C., nor does Temperance assist the FBI with their investigations.
For every superstar pro football player who makes it to NFL and pulls down multi-million dollar salaries for years, there are countless third-string journeymen who knock about the league accepting short-term contracts with any team that will have them. These are the guys who were top athletes in high school, and just good enough in college that pro teams decided to give them a look. Though they know they’ll never have a Hall of Fame career, they’re not quite willing to give up the dream yet.
One of my favorite television shows these days is Cold Case, where a group of Philadelphia homicide detectives routinely reopen murder cases that years — and often decades — old.
Nicholas Sparks is one of those modern authors that I always see on bestseller lists. People who like his works really like them, while those who hate his books really hate them. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground at all.
I don’t read too many modern books because I find that my experiences with them are usually hit or miss. The only time I hear about contemporary authors is when they generate lots of online buzz or when their books shoot to the top of the NY Times Bestsellers list. Sometimes the books live up to the hype and give me fun new authors to read (JK Rowlings, Dan Brown); other times, I’m left wondering what all the fuss is about (Michael Connelly, Nicholas Sparks).
A friend of mine recently told me about an excellent series of home educational courses that she discovered years ago. The courses are provided by The Teaching Company, and consist of audio or video lectures about certain subjects delivered by prominent university professors from across the country. The courses are quite expensive (ranging from $199 for an audio download to $374 for DVDs), but my friend swears that they’re worth it.