The Great Courses

I am a big fan of the Great Courses on CD from the Teaching Company  These are all the courses I would have taken in college if I had not been concerned with such trivialities as meeting the requirements of a major.  Happily, my local library has a pretty wide selection.  So far, I have listened to the following:

The Great Debate: Advocates and Opponents of the American Constitution by Thomas L. Pangle, University of Texas;

Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning by David Zarefsky, Northwestern;

Cycles of American Political Thought by Joseph F. Kobylka, SMU;

Philosophy of Science by Jeffrey L. Kasser, University of Michigan;

The New Testament and From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity by Bart D. Ehrman, UNC;


Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World Through Experience and Reason by James Hall, University of Richmond:

Interpreting the 20th Century: The Struggle Over Democracy by Pamela Radcliff, UCSD:

The History of Ancient Rome by Garrett G. Fagan, Penn. State.

Everyone of them has been terrific.

Currently I am listening to The Conservative Tradition by Professor Patrick N. Allitt of Emory University. I don't know anything about Allitt's political leanings, but I am sure that many conservatives will consider him suspect by virtue of the fact that he is a college professor.  Nevertheless, he said at the beginning of the course that he hoped his listeners wouldn't be able to figure out his politics from his lectures and I have not been able to so far.