Christopher

Not my usual cup of tea, but...

Revisado: 12-16-22

This book is largely a travelogue with just enough history to explain the backstory of the experiences. I normally prefer straight histories, but this book really gave a great flavor of what the disparate island cultures are really like. I had no idea there were so many differences (probably because most of the Indonesians I meet work in the same industry). I now feel much-better equipped to talk with those I meet without making a fool of myself out of ignorance.

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Excellent overview

Revisado: 06-20-22

This was a truly good overview of 3 centuries of Russian history. It gave a good understanding of the personalities involved. The names of all the ministers and functionaries can run together at times, but the broad scope of the events remains clear throughout.

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Oustanding overview of 6000 years of history

Revisado: 05-15-21

This course is 2nd only to Bob Brier's course on ancient Egypt. It has a ton of good information about the many different tribes and language groups of the steppes. The one issue is his mispronunciation of various words that are not part of his area (madrasa and trebuchet for instance). Other than that, it's excellent. His repeated references to the various language groupings convinced me to go ahead and look into John McWhorter's Course on the story of human language. Was that intentional product placement? Nah.

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Excellent for tying things together

Revisado: 12-16-19

I would NOT start studying the history of the ancient world with this book. However, once you've studied up on the various ancient civilizations individually, come to this book to find all manner of stories you don't tend to find in those individual areas as well as how much of what you learned about the various civilizations is tied to what was going on in the other areas. It is a good review and an expansion of what you will have already learned. I look forward to her book on the Medieval world.

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History of the other part of Europe

Revisado: 08-29-19

There is so much material about the history of Greece & Rome, but once you move north of the Mediterranean, it's largely a dearth. This covers that part of Europe from the Iberian Peninsula/British Isles across to the Black Sea from the Bronze Age down to the Roman period. It gets a bit into the archaeological weeds, but you rather have to given the lack of written sources. It also covers the interactions between the Celts and other groups like the Scythians, Germanic tribes, Greece, & Rome. You have to be attentive, because it is dense. Still, if you're interested in the history of human migration, get this book.

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esto le resultó útil a 25 personas

Excellent overview of a LOT of history

Revisado: 04-04-19

This course has a little bit of everything. In addition to the 3000 years of history told, not as a bunch of dry dates, but as a story from beginning to end, there are fascinating side trips such as learning to write out words in hieroglyphs and the fascinating tale of how the lecturer actually went about mummifying a cadaver and what they learned from the attempt. He brings a lot of the history to life with theories of the reasons why the people did what they did. He is also careful to note when a theory is his own versus a consensus view. Overall, if you want to learn a TON about ancient Egypt, this is your course.

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Take it with a grain of salt

Revisado: 03-12-19

This history has the usual bias that is typical of experts on one particular ancient culture. "This culture invented these things, therefore everyone else copied them." Egyptologists do it as well. Lost from this is the idea that 2 different cultures can develop technologies and techniques independently (I mean look at cuneiform symbols and hieroglyphs and try to figure out how one could lead to the other). That was not too surprising. What was rather annoying, however, was the notion that came to the fore when she got to the interaction between the Mesopotamian cultures and the west (particularly the Greeks and Persians). She stated quite clearly that there are no Persian accounts of the battles they had with the Greeks. Yet, she then states that obviously the Greek accounts cannot be trusted to be accurate. Based upon what? What secret knowledge does she have of what REALLY happened? Granted, the Greeks had their own agenda, but to completely discount them when you have nothing else to look at is rather absurd. We then would have no information about what happened during this critical period of world history. Sorry, but this is a rather mediocre course at best.

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Get ready for an interesting ride

Revisado: 11-15-18

This book is aimed NOT so much at evolution but at abiogenesis. I had heard about information theory quite a bit, but never really paid it much credence until hearing this book. The probabilities involved in the random generation of the information required are staggeringly worse than I had ever imagined - to say nothing of the innate improbability of getting the biological precursors together in the first place. This is what biology text books should say (and likely will say in the not-too-distant future as evidence continues to pile up against materialistic naturalism). #EyeOpening #WellDone #Abiogenesis #tagsgiving #sweepstakes

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Not sure what I expected, but it was good

Revisado: 11-15-18

There are plenty of stories in this book along with some interesting chemistry. Some I knew; quite a bit I did not. It is a lot of information, but it's interesting to see how human all of the "great scientific minds" truly were. #Triviatastic #WorthAListen #tagsgiving #sweepstakes

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

If you love Sherlock Holmes, look no further

Revisado: 11-15-18

This is a truly outstanding collection of the stories. It is arranged as best as possible in a chronological order so that you can grasp references made in one case to a previous case. It is truly amazing how many stories I did NOT know. #Mystery #Captivating #GreatTime #tagsgiving #sweepstakes

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