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European History and European Lives
Set of 18 cd lectures by distinguished professor: Jonathan Steinberg from the University of Pennsylvania. Complete with study guides, cases, incredible learning experience!
Audio CD
First published January 1, 2003
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About the author
Jonathan Steinberg
29 books41 followersJonathan Steinberg is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of European History and former Chair of the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his A. B. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from Cambridge University.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
November 28, 2021
This is a biased if entertaining look at these eras and places.
My problem is that during colonization and chattel slavery Europe can not be treated as it existed isolated from contact with other places and peoples. Europe during this period can't be removed from its colonizing actions abroad as that informed the behaviors in Europe and vice versa.
This book ignores that and treats Europe as if it grew in isolation which is ahistorical.
The information on Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI and the French Revolution is incorrect or mis-stated in multiple places and multiple ways.
There's also goofy shit like the argument that Russia is an Asiatic country solely because the Mongol Empire acted as overlord to white europeans of Danish descent who sat the throne in Rus, now Russia.
This ignores that what is now Spain was controlled for 600 yrs by Islamic North Africans, notice the Iberian Peninsula is not considered Asiatic nor African.
These ideas are biased and largely based in eugenicist mythology.
Its interesting that every European country and system of government is compared to the USA. However the USA isn't a democracy before 1865 full stop and arguably not a democracy after. The country is founded as an oligarchy with only white land owning men voting and with the Electoral College protecting against true democracy.
The info on Napoleon is goofy, he did not revolutionize anything, he was a well organized tyrant.
Nazi's kept excellent records but it doesn't change their crimes.
Somehow for Napoleon his 'codes' negate the chaos and tyranny of his fucked up rule. He's way worse than 'the terror' of the French Revolution and is responsible for way more death.
I knew the author and I would not agree on outcomes but I've found that even the facts are speculative.
Leaving me to conclude that while this is entertaining it has little educational value.
My problem is that during colonization and chattel slavery Europe can not be treated as it existed isolated from contact with other places and peoples. Europe during this period can't be removed from its colonizing actions abroad as that informed the behaviors in Europe and vice versa.
This book ignores that and treats Europe as if it grew in isolation which is ahistorical.
The information on Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI and the French Revolution is incorrect or mis-stated in multiple places and multiple ways.
There's also goofy shit like the argument that Russia is an Asiatic country solely because the Mongol Empire acted as overlord to white europeans of Danish descent who sat the throne in Rus, now Russia.
This ignores that what is now Spain was controlled for 600 yrs by Islamic North Africans, notice the Iberian Peninsula is not considered Asiatic nor African.
These ideas are biased and largely based in eugenicist mythology.
Its interesting that every European country and system of government is compared to the USA. However the USA isn't a democracy before 1865 full stop and arguably not a democracy after. The country is founded as an oligarchy with only white land owning men voting and with the Electoral College protecting against true democracy.
The info on Napoleon is goofy, he did not revolutionize anything, he was a well organized tyrant.
Nazi's kept excellent records but it doesn't change their crimes.
Somehow for Napoleon his 'codes' negate the chaos and tyranny of his fucked up rule. He's way worse than 'the terror' of the French Revolution and is responsible for way more death.
I knew the author and I would not agree on outcomes but I've found that even the facts are speculative.
Leaving me to conclude that while this is entertaining it has little educational value.
February 9, 2022
I just finished listening to this set of audio lectures from 2003 and found it fascinating. Professor Steinberg focuses on 36 individuals to illustrate historic trends and movements. I recommend it to those who already have a familiarity with this historical period.
Available free via the Audible Plus catalog.
Available free via the Audible Plus catalog.
April 12, 2022
The concept of this course, to explore the events and developments that shaped the history of Europe in the two centuries between 1715 and 1914 through the lives of a number of individuals - monarchs, politicians, artists, scientists, industrialists, and more - is quite unique and interesting. On the whole, I'd say it worked out quite well. Sure, I could come up with a few dozen more fascinating historical figures from the era, but Steinberg's selections were all well considered and presented - albeit, as was to be expected given the time constraints, with less depths than one might have wished for.
March 2, 2024
The Long-Suffering Wife and I downloaded this series of 36 thirty-minute lectures on European historical personalities onto our various gadgets and listened to them exclusively in the car during long road trips, over a period of two years or so, often while tossing snack packaging over our shoulders into the back seat.
It was excellent for this purpose. If we pulled into your hotel mid-lecture, it was easier to go back to the beginning of the lecture. We sometimes went several months without a road trip, there was no trouble picking up the story line. Most lectures are free-standing, although occasionally the lecturer refers in passing to people and events that he mentioned previously.
If you wanted to listen to them out of order, you could, without any loss of understanding.
If you don't want to invest in these lectures, they'd also be excellent for borrowing or downloading from your local library. You could listen to a couple of lectures before they were due to be returned, and perhaps borrow them again weeks or months later and resume.
I especially enjoyed the lectures about people who were NOT politicians or statesmen but, the lecturer argues convincingly, are important for understanding European history. Examples: C. P. E. Bach, Goya, Mary Wollstonecraft. I especially enjoyed the lecture on Richard Wagner, but it was easy to hit a home run with the material -- he was a spectacularly awful person and had a life full of memorably insane selfishness.
Hitting the road? Take these strange "heroes" of European history with you, as well as sufficient snacks and a large garbage bag to clean the back seat when you return.
It was excellent for this purpose. If we pulled into your hotel mid-lecture, it was easier to go back to the beginning of the lecture. We sometimes went several months without a road trip, there was no trouble picking up the story line. Most lectures are free-standing, although occasionally the lecturer refers in passing to people and events that he mentioned previously.
If you wanted to listen to them out of order, you could, without any loss of understanding.
If you don't want to invest in these lectures, they'd also be excellent for borrowing or downloading from your local library. You could listen to a couple of lectures before they were due to be returned, and perhaps borrow them again weeks or months later and resume.
I especially enjoyed the lectures about people who were NOT politicians or statesmen but, the lecturer argues convincingly, are important for understanding European history. Examples: C. P. E. Bach, Goya, Mary Wollstonecraft. I especially enjoyed the lecture on Richard Wagner, but it was easy to hit a home run with the material -- he was a spectacularly awful person and had a life full of memorably insane selfishness.
Hitting the road? Take these strange "heroes" of European history with you, as well as sufficient snacks and a large garbage bag to clean the back seat when you return.
March 23, 2021
This is probably about the eighth Great Courses series that I have listened to, and I think it’s probably the best. Steinberg’s goal is not so much to give you a bunch of potted biographies, but rather to take individual people to show particular facets of the long 18th century, the transition from the ancient regime through to its total collapse in World War I and the rise of modernity.
Especially through Mike Duncan (Revolutions podcast), and various other readings, I am fairly familiar with the political structure of the long 18th century. So in a certain sense I’m not optimally suited for judging the success of Steinberg’s project of explaining the structure of an epoch via biographies: I already have a decent sense of the 18th-century landscape. But he chooses people extremely well, it’s a very well thought out list of people from a variety of backgrounds, who also illustrate specific and interesting facets of 18th century. I think his choice of subjects is excellent, there are a few figures that are household names, and hard to get around like Robespierre and Napoleon. But many the others are figures I knew the significance of, like Hume or Maria Teresa (I had already listened to a full episode of Duncan doing a biography of Maria Teresa), but nevertheless Steinberg is able to give biographical details and historical significance that largely I only had traces of before. So the outline that I have from these other sources now are these very well filled in markers at specific points that fill in extra detail on how specific people fit in to that outline.
Steinberg is an excellent rhetorician: no ums, buts, or annoying breathing; he is American, but spent many years at Oxford, so that gives him a bit of a sense of both sides of the Atlantic, and his spoken English reflects that. The lectures are organized, and clearly are done from notes, but it’s at least partly extemporaneous and the cadence is truly conversational, without any NPR voice or repeated inflections.
He is obviously enamored with his subjects, but I think he also still gives fair assessments of them, and he’s obviously very engaged in the project of doing this course. Unlike some other Great Courses, which are adaptations of college courses that the professors may be done many times, Steinberg is doing this for fun and for his own entertainment, and that comes across in the best possible way. He has a particular gift for collating contemporaneous commentators, dropping quotes that really put the subjects into context and show how they were viewed at the time.
There are a few places where Steinberg brings in his own worldview in a way that is distracting and misplaced, especially his rather haphazard and anecdotal gender-essentialist commentary in the Wollstonecraft lecture. If you can kind of mentally edit that out, it's only like 0.5% of the lectures (so far, anyway). I don't think he's like super-reactionary or even conservative, but it was just a bit out-of-touch boomer. The Pasteur and Darwin bios also seemed a bit weaker, which he admits: Steinberg is not a scientist. But he does the work to make them decent (he says he consulted with two historians of science for Pasteur); and it perhaps only against the brilliance of his German and Jewish lectures (esp.: Frederick, Bismarck, Rothschild, Dreyfus), which Steinberg spent his career on, that they might seem to not measure up.
Highly recommended.
Especially through Mike Duncan (Revolutions podcast), and various other readings, I am fairly familiar with the political structure of the long 18th century. So in a certain sense I’m not optimally suited for judging the success of Steinberg’s project of explaining the structure of an epoch via biographies: I already have a decent sense of the 18th-century landscape. But he chooses people extremely well, it’s a very well thought out list of people from a variety of backgrounds, who also illustrate specific and interesting facets of 18th century. I think his choice of subjects is excellent, there are a few figures that are household names, and hard to get around like Robespierre and Napoleon. But many the others are figures I knew the significance of, like Hume or Maria Teresa (I had already listened to a full episode of Duncan doing a biography of Maria Teresa), but nevertheless Steinberg is able to give biographical details and historical significance that largely I only had traces of before. So the outline that I have from these other sources now are these very well filled in markers at specific points that fill in extra detail on how specific people fit in to that outline.
Steinberg is an excellent rhetorician: no ums, buts, or annoying breathing; he is American, but spent many years at Oxford, so that gives him a bit of a sense of both sides of the Atlantic, and his spoken English reflects that. The lectures are organized, and clearly are done from notes, but it’s at least partly extemporaneous and the cadence is truly conversational, without any NPR voice or repeated inflections.
He is obviously enamored with his subjects, but I think he also still gives fair assessments of them, and he’s obviously very engaged in the project of doing this course. Unlike some other Great Courses, which are adaptations of college courses that the professors may be done many times, Steinberg is doing this for fun and for his own entertainment, and that comes across in the best possible way. He has a particular gift for collating contemporaneous commentators, dropping quotes that really put the subjects into context and show how they were viewed at the time.
There are a few places where Steinberg brings in his own worldview in a way that is distracting and misplaced, especially his rather haphazard and anecdotal gender-essentialist commentary in the Wollstonecraft lecture. If you can kind of mentally edit that out, it's only like 0.5% of the lectures (so far, anyway). I don't think he's like super-reactionary or even conservative, but it was just a bit out-of-touch boomer. The Pasteur and Darwin bios also seemed a bit weaker, which he admits: Steinberg is not a scientist. But he does the work to make them decent (he says he consulted with two historians of science for Pasteur); and it perhaps only against the brilliance of his German and Jewish lectures (esp.: Frederick, Bismarck, Rothschild, Dreyfus), which Steinberg spent his career on, that they might seem to not measure up.
Highly recommended.
May 9, 2015
Þessir fyrirlestrar fjalla um sögu Evrópu á tímabilinu 1715-1914. Kennarinn Jonathan Steinberg gerir skemmtilega tilraun til að skoða þennan tíma sem einkenndist af örum breytingum í gegnum líf þekktra persóna sem eru að hans mati einkennandi eða brautryðjendur mismunandi strauma og stefna þessa tíma þegar síðmiðöldum lýkur og upphaf nútímans hefst.
Steinberg fjallar vel um tímabilið sjálft og þær breytingar sem urðu með og einkenndu þessa einstaklinga en sem gefur að skilja verður ævisaga persónanna stundum æði stuttaraleg.
Steinberg fjallar vel um tímabilið sjálft og þær breytingar sem urðu með og einkenndu þessa einstaklinga en sem gefur að skilja verður ævisaga persónanna stundum æði stuttaraleg.
October 24, 2013
Steinberg is fabulously observant and a gifted interpreter of a meaningful past. His method of using biographical perspectives very much enhances, rather than limits, his ability to adequately convey the times of the personage sampled. These lectures offered more moments of revelation and fascination than any other piece of popular history I have ever consumed. Outstanding.
January 13, 2015
A collection of lectures on a few dozen of the most notable European lives from 1715 to 1914. I learned a ton, and forgot more. It was disturbing to realize how many "important" people I'd never heard about. I think it gave me a little perspective about the world.
May 15, 2015
The approach of using a series of short biographies to illustrate the procession of European history was fun and enlightening. Unfortunately, this approach made each short session seem like the further abbreviation of a reader's digest condensed version of a life. Still, it was very enjoyable.
October 4, 2017
Bravo professor! Well done! Really enjoyed this lectures on European history. Each one offers a glimpse into why what happened in history happened. If you like history or are curious about Europe, this course is for you.
January 4, 2017
9: really enjoyed this one
February 28, 2015
A nice narrative through biographies. Pretty broad coverage of events and personalities during the 200 years covered.
November 24, 2018
Some interesting twists to history and change.
September 10, 2019
Steinberg's writes 35 biographies and uses them to show how Europe developed into the modern era. Many of the people he includes are famous, such as Napoleon, Darwin, Marx & Engels, Queen Victoria. Some are not quite so well known. Monarchs, writers, scientists, philosophers, industrialists and others. It was quite a series.
November 19, 2024
Brilliant… a book containing people who made such a difference, academics studied them, scholars wrote about them and then Professor Jonathan Steinberg chose to put all his words in one spot for our further erudition and went one step beyond to the studio and recorded his words for wider coverage.
Thank you for your words Jonathan Steinberg, very much appreciated (-:
Thank you for your words Jonathan Steinberg, very much appreciated (-:
February 7, 2021
Probably a 3.5. I think this came across as patchy; some of the lives were more interesting than others, and some were more memorable. Definitely a couple that I will follow up on who aren't as well known, but more of a bio sampler than a comprehensive history.
December 19, 2018
Interesting but too ambitious to get sufficient depth.
April 29, 2022
I was surprised by some of the things I heard about it. It's fascinating to hear about it and gives a pretty good overview d the kind of world they inhabited.
September 11, 2023
An interesting book! One of the books I was able listen to for free on Audible.
December 19, 2024
An enjoyable listen, but a lot of the scholarship is obviously dated. 30 minute lectures on some of these figures makes for a very shallow exploration of their lives...
September 7, 2019
This is a memorable book by a wonderful author-lecturer! The professor explains in 48 lectures how Europe changed from the old king-and-peasant system to the newer, modern system of life!
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews