Audio lecture finished

[johnridley]

A History of the United States (The Teaching Company)

84 lectures, 30 minutes each. Yeah, this took a while. Totally worth it.

I suspect that my steel sieve of a brain will forget most of it soon enough, but it was interesting anyway.

On to something that requires less braining - By Heresies Distressed is out on audio. Yeah, I didn't think I'd bother, but after a few months away I think I can take it.

Comments

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

What did you find most surprising?

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Surprising? Hm, mostly it was filling in gaps. There was a lot of detail about each period that really helped to set the events in context. Some description of the personality of the people involved, the slogans, how the behavior of the press changed over the years, etc.

I guess one thing that actually surprised me was that over the years, people have said to me "Well, the civil war wasn't JUST about slavery." Well, if these lecturers are to be believed, yes, it was. There were other issues, but they stemmed from slavery as well. All throughout the history up through the civil war, that issue just keeps coming up as a thorn in everyone's side, and after the civil war it's still reverberating in a lot of ways. I knew about the stuff since the war, though the lectures gave it a little more flavor.

They actually used three lecturers for this series, the one that covered the civil war and reconstruction period was Gary W Gallagher, who is one of the leading experts on the history of the civil war, so I will go with his version.