Foundations of Western Civilization II: A History of the Modern Western World

By: Robert Bucholz, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Robert Bucholz

Length: 24 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Beginning with the Renaissance, the culture of the West exploded. Over the next 600 years, rapid innovations in philosophy, technology, economics, military affairs, and politics allowed what had once been a cultural backwater left by the collapse of the Roman Empire to dominate the world.

This comprehensive series of 48 lectures by an award-winning teacher and captivating lecturer will show you how - and why - this extraordinary transformation took place.

As you listen to the series, you'll begin to grasp not only the history of Western civilization, but the meaning of civilization itself, as this grand narrative of the past five centuries creates a coherent context for the period's events and trends, and offers an analysis of what these five centuries have bequeathed to us. Lecture by lecture, you'll explores the ideas, events, and characters that modeled Western political, social, religious, intellectual, cultural, scientific, technological, and economic history between the 16th and 20th centuries. You'll learn how Western civilization was shaped by the low as well as the mighty, the practical as well as the artistic. You'll gain a larger understanding of the political, social, and cultural events that shaped Europe. And you'll explore the ramifications of these epoch-making events on the rest of the world, including the United States.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2006 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2006 The Great Courses

Outstanding overview of 500 years

The telling requires a good foundation of medieval history but Professor Nichols does an amazing job of walking you through the journey of these societies, concepts, culture and even everyday people.

excellent content, I truly recommended to everyone

Excellent content, I truly recommend to everyone interested in an overall take on history, politics and philosophy (general ideas) of Western Civilization.

Great high level march through history.

This was my first time reading about European history since high school, and this was a great reintroduction. The lectures necessarily stay very high level as there is a long time period to cover. The lecturer does a really great job of giving context of historical events that I lacked, which allowed me to view the events in a different way. He describes what it was like for people, from rich to poor, to live in each of the time periods, and what their perceptions of the events were. I would highly recommended this book to history beginners or novices.

Worth every moment.

Well presented lecture series that makes you want to stay in your seat through onevlecture after another.

Excellent, even in 2023

Well done, I learned a lot, would definitely look for our lectures by this professor

Wow. I have learned so much.

If I had had a history teacher like this in high school or college I might not be having to learn all this in my seventies. But better late than never. I had come to most of the same conclusions about the meaning and purpose of civilization but never had historical knowledge to confirm those ideas.
I inspired to learn more and apply it to my life.

Priceless!

I am a child of the 50's. Everybody bought a set of encyclopedias for their house. Research was accomplished by visiting the library and researching articles and books via the research dept using the readers guide to periodical literature. Today we have everything at our fingertips with a laptop computer and the internet. In high school and college we took American history,and world history(divided into sections over the past 2000 years. This amazing series begins much earlier with the "Big Bang theory" and takes us to the evolution of stars, the universe, the Sun as one of the stars, photosynthesis and early life in the ocean, single cell, multi cell, life movement from water to land, evolution of early life to more advanced life, human life evolving from hunters, gatherers, to agrarian people. Buy this history and learn in a concise series of lectures "Big History". If you read this series together with Jean Auel's trilogy beginning with "Clan of the Cave Bear: You will have more enjoyment of the pure history matched with enjoyable fiction.

Great history that I really enjoyed.

Thanks, really enjoyed all the great parts that I never fully understood. I'd definitely recommend this book to people looking to better understand the last 500 years.

Absolutely exceptional!

The material was easy to understand and fun to learn. The Professor was clear of speech and had a wide and thoughtful focus.

A Foundation for Personal Knowledge

A perfect survey of so many points in time that, now that I know them better, explain so much.