Extremely interesting and well presented!

I have to admit that I am a really big fan of Prof. Allitt's Great Courses Audiobooks, in particular this one. The broad and complex topic of industrial revolution is presented in an understandable way, much more in detail and also with a better overview than anything I have heared about this topic before. I was a bit suprised that it did not end at the dawn of modern imperialism but also covers the time after WWI. As these modern times are mostly presented with a strong focus of WWII, the cold war and the truggle between democracies and totalitarian regimes, it was quite interesting to hear something about it from a more industrialy and technologicially focused perspective.

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very enjoyable and informative

started out slowly but quickly picked up on interesting content. can be enjoyed by laymen as well as economists.

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1 Person fand das hilfreich

Really great

This is my third course by Patrick Allitt, the others being the rise and fall of the British Empire and Victorian Britain and I can only recommend this teacher and his courses. Each lecture highlights a different part of the history of industrialization and bit by bit a big picture emegres.
I can remember a lot of information and now have a better understanding of the interwoven topics British Empire/ Victorian Age/ Industrialization as part of history and how they influence the situation of today. Could I ask for more from a course? Maybe not.
But Patrick Allitt delivers anyway^^
The best part about this course an the others by him is in my opinion, that he noticably has a lot of fun explaining his topics and is clearly passionate about them. Especially when quoting historic figures and poems. That made listening fun 😃

I hope my few words provide a little insight into the quality of these lectures. Bare in mind that I am not a native speaker and still found it easy to follow the teacher. I am looking forward to another course by him and to repeat the ones I have finished so far.

May you enjoy them as I have

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2 Leute fanden das hilfreich

A spoken museum visit

A Great Courses audiobook made in co-operation with the Smithsonian – that seemed like a promising offer. For those who share that sentiment, a word of caution: The experience is much more like an extensive visit to a museum (like the Smithsonian) than a university level lecture (as one would expect from the Great Courses series). If you have a good memory and love details, then you are well equipped to thoroughly enjoy this product. If you are more inclined towards the analytical, this audiobook may not live up to your expectations. I write this review from the latter perspective.

The content of “The Industrial Revolution” roughly begins with the 17th century and stretches all the way to the present. It is grouped by themes, e.g. canal building or the railroad. The selection of these themes seems somewhat arbitrary. For example, there is a whole 30 minute lecture on the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel while the industrialization of Russia under the Bolsheviks comes as a side-note of about five minutes. I also found it difficult to draw connections between the individual topics, which would have been my primary expectation of a Great Courses product. Using the analogy of a museum visit, the experience was more like walking through different exhibition rooms as they happen to lie in one’s path. Each room/lecture offered a great amount of information and detail, but without a really good memory most of these details were washed away in the next room by the next flood of information. Very few takeaways remained. Starting with the late 19th century the lectures became broader and broader, culminating in a hasty and superficial rush through the 20th century.

The narrator is a Briton living in the US, and from his opening remarks I understood that his target audience were Americans with little prior knowledge. For me as an EU consumer this was noticeable in a strong bias towards British and American history, the recurring advertising of Britain as a travel destination, and the paraphrasing of every historical quotation right after it was given, making it more consumable without prior knowledge.

To give two examples of the aforementioned bias: In a combined section on bicycles and automobiles, the narrator spends decent time on Henry Ford, which makes sense in a course on Industrialization. He also talks about the sales strategy of General Motors, which I already found less relevant. One of the two inventors of the automobile, Gottlieb Daimler, is briefly referenced, while I don’t remember Carl Benz being mentioned at all. In contrast, there is a standalone section on flight, and much of it is spent on the life of the Wright brothers. I failed to grasp why they should have been so much more important for industrialization than Daimler and Benz. I wouldn’t have minded skipping all inventors and keeping the focus on industry, but the detailed account of the Wrights' exploits seemed mostly driven by them being Americans. Another example: The narrator briefly skims over the industrialization of Russia under Stalin, and then spends more time describing the contents of Aldous Huxley’s book “Brave New World”. This one I not only found off topic, but also inappropriate.

The narrator speaks an easily comprehensible British English. He appears to be reading a script. His sentences are often long and his intonation does not vary much. Combined with his focus on details this has made it difficult for me to keep up my attention. All in all I am not a fan of this audiobook. I hope it will serve you better.

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2 Leute fanden das hilfreich