The Decisive Battles of World History — Gregory Aldrete — Lukewarm

 

In part, this is a review of the material in the Decisive Battles of World History, in part, it's a review of The great courses. Specifically, it's not a book; It's explicitly a "lecture series". It's clearly segmented into 40  30-minute lectures. Typically, a traditional book has chapters deeply interconnected with one another, built on a plot or theme that gives the volume a sense of continuity. In this course, each lecture covers a single battle with relatively little connecting it to other lectures.This means that listening can be more spaced out (you don't need fresh details in your mind) but it also means that the content doesn't sink in as well (much less interleaved retrieval).

The content was interesting but not very impactful. The most interesting part was the argument for the importance of each battle relative to other battles in history. The idea is that each battle in the series had an uncertain outcome with significant cultural, religious, and political stakes in play. The background of key individuals was also interesting. The individual narrative in world-changing events seems to be deeply embedded in human psychology. Aldrete did a good job of bringing several figures from history to life in a balanced and historically factual way. Not just Alexander, Ceaser and Napolean, but also slightly less well known but similarly fascinating figures such as Ramesses II, Babur, and William the Bastard.

Overall, I'm not upset I spent time on this but I likely won't re-listen. It's an engaging exercise if you're interested in how events and individuals seem to impact the flow of history.