well read but of questionable historical accuracy

I like the authors passion and use of story but I think there was an overeliance on anecdotes and apocryphal stories.

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Entertaining and informative, with some caveats

This is an engaging little course, very entertaining and fairly informative. Each lecture focuses on a key historical event, so it's more like a history buffet than an actual course of studies, and it definitely doesn't reach the depth of other Great Courses on offer. It's still good, though, although it has some issues. While the lecturer is doubtlessly an expert in her field, she occasionally blurts out stuff that doesn't tally with what I know of European history. For instance, she refers to "the great empires of Ancient Greece and Rome". Does she mean the Macedonian Empire, the Delian League, or Byzantium? Did I fall asleep in school, and missed out on a whole Ancient Greek Empire? Did she just misspeak? I might never find out.

My other issue is with her pronunciation of foreign languages. I was very impressed by the fact that she read some Old English, until I heard her read out some Italian. I was born and bred in Italy, and I really struggled to make out what she was saying. If her knowledge of the other languages is at the same level, she would be better off sticking to translations only. Mangling foreign languages seems to be a common issue with American lecturers, though, so maybe it's just something I have to learn to overlook.

Despite these issues, this IS a good little course, and if you have no previous knowledge of this period, you could pick up some useful little facts. If nothing else, it might encourage you to give other courses a go, or give you something interesting to discuss at your next dinner party.

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1 person found this helpful

Great stories

Excellent course to provide insights into well and lesser known events, people and inventions and their ramifications on society then and now. Would have been awesome to marry this up with a similar outlined course for other parts outside the western world.

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Just absolutely excellent!

I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to this course. What a clever idea to write it from a standpoint of ‘Turning Points’ in medieval history. One learns so much about medieval thought and historical events from this focus; even in ways not considered before. Professor Dorsey Armstrong narrates her own work, and I think because of that, the enthusiasm comes through - at no point was this course ever boring or mundane. Good for the novice, university student, postgraduates and general history enthusiasts. An excellent listen!

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1 person found this helpful

Great performance

Enthusiastic and engaging reader. Facinating and well structured course. Covers areas that other courses on Medieval history have left out. I found the story of Abelard and Heloise totally fascinating.

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History you can't trust

When you have a huge period of history and are trying to plot out a series of key moments, some short hand and simplification is inevitable. However, this one lost me when the narrator began discussing King Arthur. The narrator treats Arthur as an entirely historical figure, going so far as to confirm the location of Camelot. As anyone with even a passing knowledge of the era could tell you, there is absolutely no evidence that Arthur was anything more than a folk tale and every aspect of the later myth is subject to debate. That debate is very interesting and the various theories and interpretations could fill a lecture course by themselves, but the way the topic is treated here is simply a bizarre counterfactual report passed off as truth. Thankfully it was only the second lecture, so I haven't been subject to any inaccuracies in subjects where I don't know enough to know better. The Early Middle Ages lecture course is a good alternative.

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Disappointing. Modern Scholar is much better

Any additional comments?

Why get a Literary expert in to talk about history? It's all very superficial and she spends more time talking about what she has said and what's she's going to say rather than saying anything,

I thought the first lecture was poor but persevered and found the 2nd worse. Having any of Arthur's battles as turning points is ridiculous as no one is sure he even existed. King Arthur is culturally significant but not historically.

Get the Modern Scholar series instead as it's much better. I may try another Great Courses but this has put me off

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8 people found this helpful

Disappointing

Nice ideal, poorly done. Do not bother. This book is not worth listening to.

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