Nieves Fragapane

Love any Course Dr Fears does. Terrific

Revisado: 10-27-24

Dr Fears brings the Greeks and Romans to life wonderfully with wit and warmth. His courses are full of life lessons.

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Old News for Conservatives but Good to Hear from Author’s Perspective

Revisado: 06-17-24

Author comes from inside the Progressive movement with a different perspective than Conservative Media on some of the Progressive excesses but with similar conclusions. Welcome honesty and insight.

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Native good, non-Native bad ad nauseam

Revisado: 08-30-23

I love the Great Courses Histories and this is my first rating below a 4. Reading is incredibly SLOW! Have never listened at speed greater that 1.15 but listened to this at 1.35 and didn’t miss a thing. Content is a non-stop litany of Native American good - non-Native American bad and is so relentlessly preachy that I can’t believe I listened to the entire rant. Example: While consistently excoriating foreigners for using force to take Native American land, the author blithely lists “Conquest” as one of the reasons why Powhatan’s sphere of rule was so large. The author uses and abuses statistics and numbers to consistently get the results he wants by talking percentages when the absolute numbers are small and absolute numbers when the percentages are small for something he wants to favor and the opposite when he doesn’t favor. There are dozens of references like “it has been noted” or “some sources suggest that” or “there are reports that” and all with no further support or context. But the best of all is when he mentions casually that this or that military action against some tribe (which he will go on the describe in gory detail) may have been in response to a prior massacre by the Native Americans (of which no other mention is made). In the history of the world at the time of contact with Native Americans, the Right of Conquest was recognized just as it was by Powhatan. Indigenous populations in conquered lands were very often extirpated (Gibbon says that of the Romans more times than I could count) in defeat. Colonial Americans tried (very often failing) to provide better treatment for conquered Native Americans tribes. Surely that fact is worth at least a few kind words but there are none that I recall in this “Great” Course. I cannot recommend it.

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Thank you Audible!

Revisado: 01-30-23

Incredible insight and scope from one of the chief voices for the Conservative point of view. Left me with a daunting list of other poets, thinkers and leaders that I now want to read for myself. This has opened my mind to a world of scholarship and thought that I cannot wait to explore. I started with the Audible Great Course on “The Conservative Tradition”. That wonderful Course introduced me to Russell Kirk (embarrassed to admit I had not heard of him before) and it clicked. Now reading Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk and many others.

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Glad I read Gentleman in Moscow first

Revisado: 10-21-22

Gentleman is a book I will read over and over again for a long time. So I was looking forward to trying out Rules. I enjoyed the book but not the ending as many other reviews have noted. But, I doubt I would have ever read Gentleman if I had read Rules first. Maybe there is a lesson there. By the way, I was intrigued by the origin of the title which is explained in the book. Turns out there are such rules in print so I purchased a copy on Audible only to discover that the Appendix of the Towles book is a reprint of the entire set of Rules of Civility so I needn’t have bothered. If this is a spoiler, I consider it a service to my fellow readers.

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Good Information presented using an odd machine like monotone

Revisado: 01-10-22

The information presented was thought provoking and eye opening but really hard to get any flow or pacing from the Hal like computer voice monotone rattling off an hour of statements. No opinions. No connecting the dots. No conclusions. No call to action. Just a string of declarative statements. On one level refreshing to not be told what to think. On another level would have been nice to have the author express a point of view.

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Team Coppola

Revisado: 11-04-21

Read this book to appreciate Coppola’s genius as Screenwriter and Director of two great films.

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Interesting but dated

Revisado: 10-07-21

Numerous detailed examples of City Planner (government) best intentions gone horribly wrong. Few examples of Planner successes. And then, inexplicably, boundless enthusiasm for government planning (only next time by some more enlightened, but yet to be found, public servants and planners). Utter disdain for suburbs and anyone who would want to live there. But most fascinating of all is to view from 2021 perspective all the sea changes in our world since 1960 that neither she (nor likely her enlightened planners) could possibly have seen coming and planned for. She should have read F. Hayek

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One sided presentation of a complicated issue

Revisado: 07-16-21

I loved Winchester’s “The Men Who United The States” and it is hard to believe this is the same author. That book extolled the benefits of the engineering triumphs of railroads, bridges, roads, canals, telephone communication and other great endeavors to reshape the world. But, in “Land” he seems to suggest that mankind is a blight that ruins everything he touches and that hunter gatherers were the last of our species who deserved the earth they live on. He excoriates those countries that have at least tried to deal fairly with the indigenous peoples they found on the land while hardly mentioning how previous peoples of all kinds came to occupy that land to begin with. For millennia “Right of Conquest” was the way of things around the globe (see “Guns, Germs & Steel”, a Pulitzer Prize winning and fascinating book) and the conquered ended up dead or enslaved. England, Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand garner much derision from the “Land” author for their often unsuccessful attempts to at least try to do better than the conquerors of the past. Winchester also makes almost no effort to acknowledge the positive benefits of modern land use and farming methods. All we get from him is a steady stream of examples of the horrors man has inflicted on the earth and his fellow man . . . Radiation, global warming, resettlement of indigenous peoples, mining scars, animal slaughter, pollution, habitat destruction, barbed wire fences, etc. Private Ownership of land (unless at subsistence farming levels) is pretty much vilified with hardly any redeeming values mentioned.

I found the whole presentation to be extremely one sided. Cannot recommend this book and very disappointed to have to say so.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

Tremendous Life Story, Written by a Giant and Read as if both great men were Speaking

Revisado: 04-10-21

Captivating narrative filled with the personal insights of the key participants using their own words from a treasure trove of correspondences written at the time. Reader is terrific and actually sounds like Winston Churchill is talking to you.

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