High School Level - Early American History

Native Americans Through the Forty-Niners

By: Linwood Thompson, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Linwood Thompson

Make American history come alive for your student with these 30 excellent lectures that cover the first half of America's fascinating history from the settlement of the continent by Native Americans through to the California Gold Rush of 1849. Crafted with unusual creativity and innovation, each lecture is "taught" by a particular character. Professor Thompson "becomes" a Viking explorer, Christopher Columbus, revolutionary war foot soldiers, a French trapper, and a host of other characters who provide a first-person perspective on early American history.

Students will learn the differences between Southwest and Eastern Woodland Native Americans; what led Europeans such as Columbus to the New World; the roles European powers - Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands - played in their colonies and how those colonies interacted; the struggles and farsightedness of Founding Fathers Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, and others in the creation of this new nation; how canals and railroads accelerated the expansion West; and so much more.

"American history is a rich story of the events that have shaped modern American society,” notes Professor Thompson. “Allow the stories to transport you back in time to the initial shaping of a nation with diverse cultural roots. I love American history! I hope you will love it too."

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©1995 The Great Courses (P)1995 The Teaching Company, LLC

Liked the concept but can't listen to narrator

I wanted to like it but the constant teeth sucking made it impossible that listen too

It would have been awesome…

It would have been awesome if it wasn’t for the sound of the narrator smacking his lips every three to five sentences.

You get a lot of information in 30 minutes and the narrator does voices from the point of view of historical characters. At first I thought the smacking was a choice to enhance the idiosyncrasies of the the character he was performing. But once I noticed it, I couldn’t stop noticing it, in every chapter, with every character.

Good Program

excellent material to understand what's going on in government now and how political parties got started.

Painful to listen to

Couldn’t get past the first two minutes because the narrator is more concerned with doing cute impersonations than educating. And he’s horrible at it.

Very Distracting Performance

The narrator's acting out of each character is so bad that it's distracting from the content of the story.

Terrible Acting. Stupid sounding. For dumb kids.

This series is told through a series of obnoxious performances. Truly awful acting. Irritating.

Narrated horribly !

this narrator was horrible..I couldn't even listen to it very long. He's a lip smacker...drove me nuts. would love to have listened to it all but every time I tried about 2 minutes in I was so irritated with his mouths sounds...I just cant!!!

Very disappointing

Astonishingly, each chapter was (poorly) narrated impersonating various historical figures, bad accents and all. It was so distracting, so unnecessary, and so odd. I don't know who the intended audience is, but as an adult, I found it incredibly juvenile and belittling. I tried to get over myself and not take it so seriously, but honestly couldn't make it through more than a few chapters. I was really looking forward to this, so it's a huge bummer, and it's a huge departure from other Great Courses in history that I've purchased and thoroughly enjoyed. This felt like bad performance art for an elementary school setting. I'm surprised this was even allowed to happen.