Author: Thomas F. X. Noble Narrator: Thomas F. X. Noble Publisher: The Great Courses Unabridged Edition Running Time: 24 Hrs.

Buy from a third party: (The Great Courses) (The Great Courses) # of Discs : 24 (The Great Courses) # of Tapes : 24 (The Great Courses) # of Discs : 8 (The Great Courses) # of Tapes : 12

Average Rating: 3.0  Based on 1 rating Click Stars to Rate: Review this title

The Foundations of Western Civilization by Thomas F. X. Noble

This sweeping series covers an enormous amount of material to show how Western civilization emerged and changed over thousands of years, examining political, literary, religious, artistic, philosophical, and architectural contributions of successive civilizations with a wealth of detail.

Write a Review of The Foundations of Western Civilization

LOLAlex, February 17, 2006
Reviewer: LOLAlex

Excellence with occasional boredom

General Content - One of the more difficult lecture series to quantify Prof. Thomas F. X. Noble's The Foundations of Western Civilization is what could best be described as an uneven affair. There is definitely some excellent content in there, but it is interspersed with periods of unremarkable content.

Prof. Noble begins his lecture series by asking the question, "Just what do we mean by The Foundations of Western Civilization?" While this is certainly an interesting question and Prof. Noble provides some unusual insights into the concept, it is not the sort of question I want asked by someone who has 48 lectures on the topic. It is as though he is deconstructing his arguments before he even makes them. Unfortunately, he then follows up with lectures on Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt and the Middle East that provide almost nothing above a high school level of knowledge. Not a good start.

However, once Prof. Noble gets into Greek and Roman history, the lectures truly take off. He has a lot to say on these topics and his treatment of them is quite compelling. He follows it up with lectures on the rise of Christianity and the Church that are equally fascinating and I could not wait to hear more.

Unfortunately, the lectures dropped off in the Carolingian Period and I found myself stuck in some altogether dull material. It seemed as though Prof. Noble was trying to just get through this information in order to get on to the next topic. He knew that it was important to cover, but he didn't really seem to want to get too far into it.

The rest of the lectures were an up-and-down affair. Good content followed by content that the professor seemed to feel obligated to include. I was never quite sure what I was going to get with any one lecture, but I kept listening and waiting for the next great lecture. Unfortunately, not all of the lectures lived up to these lofty hopes, leaving me somewhat frustrated. In the final analysis, it is a lecture series with excellent highlights punctuated by pedestrian lowlights.

Audio Content - I listened to The Teaching Company's 24-cassette version of The Foundations of Western Civilization and found the audio to be solid. Though Prof. Noble's voice is a little thin, it is not grating. The audio is not remarkable, but neither is it bad. Overall, the audio is simply good without being great.

This Author: Thomas F. X. Noble This Narrator: Thomas F. X. Noble This Publisher: The Great Courses

We want LearnOutLoud.com to be the most complete and accurate resource for audio and video learning titles. Please let us know if you've found information missing or incorrect on this page.

For suggestions for this page email us at: suggestions@learnoutloud.com.