Foundations of Western Civilization II: A History of the Modern Western World

By: Robert Bucholz, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Robert Bucholz

Beginning with the Renaissance, the culture of the West exploded. Over the next 600 years, rapid innovations in philosophy, technology, economics, military affairs, and politics allowed what had once been a cultural backwater left by the collapse of the Roman Empire to dominate the world.

This comprehensive series of 48 lectures by an award-winning teacher and captivating lecturer will show you how - and why - this extraordinary transformation took place.

As you listen to the series, you'll begin to grasp not only the history of Western civilization, but the meaning of civilization itself, as this grand narrative of the past five centuries creates a coherent context for the period's events and trends, and offers an analysis of what these five centuries have bequeathed to us. Lecture by lecture, you'll explores the ideas, events, and characters that modeled Western political, social, religious, intellectual, cultural, scientific, technological, and economic history between the 16th and 20th centuries. You'll learn how Western civilization was shaped by the low as well as the mighty, the practical as well as the artistic. You'll gain a larger understanding of the political, social, and cultural events that shaped Europe. And you'll explore the ramifications of these epoch-making events on the rest of the world, including the United States.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2006 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2006 The Great Courses

Beautiful survey course

This was really a beautiful survey course, delivered with passion and intelligence. while arguably weighted towards British history at times, the lecturer admits to the influences of his own historical speciality. Nevertheless, the course follows the events and trends that have shaped today and tries to extract truthes that inform our modern perspective. I really enjoyed the course, and expect I will be going back through the materia and finding areas I would like to delve deeper into. Very well done.

Well done until almost the very end.

This is a 5 star course, right up until the last couple of lectures. Please do not misunderstand, I highly recommend this course, and it was both entertaining and informative, even as a 4 decade student of history.

Where it falters, and Professor Bucholz is by no means unusual in this aspect, is when historians try to study recent events as "history". First the biases of 1st hand recollections go way up in their evaluations. Second, the predictions based on the current trends at time this was recorded (about a decade ago) have not aged well at all.

A great selection, just take the history from the 1970s on, and the predictions with a hefty grain of salt.

Excellent

A must to understand and appreciate all that has come before. Exceptionally presented. History laid out well.

Amazing teacher!

I could listen to Professor Bucholz all day. His love of history and learning come through in every word. He is passionate and thoughtful, charting his own course and having his own opinions about the world events he is leading us through. He makes what could be a dull experience of listening to dates and events into a story that keeps you engrossed from lecture one to forty nine. I loved it. Thank you!

Worthy to listen and think about

This great effort to resume almost 20 centuries of civilization issues needs to be relistened taking notes and choosing more books to read. It's a very good way to get a panoramic view and decide a period or topic to specialize.