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The Spectacle Blog

Heather Mac Donald on The Great Courses

By Joseph Lawler on 8.29.11 @ 3:52PM

This past academic year, for example, a Bowdoin College student interested in American history courses could have taken "Black Women in Atlantic New Orleans," "Women in American History, 1600-1900," or "Lawn Boy Meets Valley Girl: Gender and the Suburbs," but if he wanted a course in American political history, the colonial and revolutionary periods, or the Civil War, he would have been out of luck. A Great Courses customer, by contrast, can choose from a cornucopia of American history not yet divvied up into the fiefdoms of race, gender, and sexual orientation, with multiple offerings in the American Revolution, the constitutional period, the Civil War, the Bill of Rights, and the intellectual influences on the country's founding. There are lessons here for the academy, if it will only pay them heed.

That is from Heather Mac Donald's great City Journal piece on the phenomenal success of The Great Courses, a company that sells recordings of lectures.

View all comments (10) | Leave a comment

Al Adab| 8.29.11 @ 4:04PM

Atlantic New Orleans? Did it move?
Lawn boy should get so lucky.

History and the study thereof is a part of the larger "search for Truth" than comprises the philosophy of Western Civilization. To turn it into a political football is not only a perversion of the academy, but dishonors 2500 years of our seacrh and all those who before us outlined the meaning of life and its value.

Prester John| 8.29.11 @ 4:42PM

I am currently making my way through the Great Courses lectures on the history of ancient Rome.

Great stuff, but careful about how much you pay. They have numerous "specials" where you can save up to 70% on the list price for any particular topic which can range from $20-$30 up into the $100s of dollars.

PCC| 8.29.11 @ 8:46PM

The City Journal article is excellent. Enlightening, insightful and, in many ways, uplifting.

Occam's Tool| 8.29.11 @ 9:01PM

They are quite good, and they are always offering specials.

albert constantine jr| 8.29.11 @ 11:04PM

Didn't Bowdoin College produce Civil War hero Joshua Chamberlain? I suppose I couldn't ask any student there, as apparently they don't study the man or his times.

Ningrim| 8.30.11 @ 7:33AM

try khanacademy.org

some great videos there, and it's all free

Grzmlyk| 8.30.11 @ 12:57PM

Yup - I've bought several. I think that these days some may tend toward the liberal - they seem to get more and more touchy feely over the years - but the core curriculum is reasonably unassailable. Good stuff.

Dean | 8.30.11 @ 1:45PM

The description of the Bowdoin College courses reminds me of a line from the Steely Dan song "Reelin' in the Years": The things that pass for knowledge I can't understand.

MarkJ| 8.30.11 @ 5:15PM

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain wept.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Chamberlain

J Bearden| 4.30.12 @ 2:42PM

The are a right-wing, ultra copyright policing group of people who have usurped knowledge. THAT is what the "Great Courses" people actually are. They]ll sue a kid, and almost anyone who happens to download anything they did not pay for. They do not OWN knowledge. Now, you will defend them with the same tripe you've always heard, aping the same lawyer sentiments, but I am telling you right now, these people care only about MONEY and they were "napstering" young kids long before Napster shut down. Whether you call those kids "thieves" or not, is irrelavant to the fact that this company is so money hungry that they will do what I, and many right thinking people call. "EVIL".