Great Courses US History 1
My reaction to the first chapter
I want my upcoming US History 1 course to be a great course, so I thought I’d take some inspiration from listening to the original Great Courses edition of The History of the United States, by Guelzo, Gallagher, and Allitt. This was originally published in 2003 and claims to describe American history from “Columbus to Clinton”. I’ll be commenting on at least the chapters that correspond to the course I’m preparing. Here’s my synopsis and reaction to Chapter 1.
I've watched/listened/read a handful of The Great Courses series over the years. There were some early video versions with small audiences of 5-10 people, but I've found over time that the camera on later ones into the late 00s and early 10s never shows any audience. This means the applause on the audio versions is almost always canned and used to give the appearance of an implied audience.
Students of these courses often are more on the passive side, so they seem to find reasonable scholars who also happen to be good lecturers/storytellers as the driving thrust. As a result, they don't always go into some of the deeper details as these also tend to be very introductory in nature. It seems rare to me that any of their offerings go beyond the freshman/sophomore level of material.
Thanks for teasing apart the differences in narrative you're seeing. Many of these courses are so pre-packaged that they don't provide "traditional" textbooks beyond the course guides which are usually scant notes/reviews of what appears in the lectures with a small handful of additional resources. It's really these additional readings where the more interesting pieces of a fuller course can be found, so I'm curious to hear what you think of their recommended readings/bibliographic suggestions (if any).
And 'this week';
Lost Mayan city found in Mexico jungle by accident
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmznzkly3go
... so the numbers with another de-stabilising wobble.