History Youtuber Lindybeige now has a sponsor: The Great Courses Plus:
Welcome to The Great Courses Plus | The Great Courses Plus (this is his link)
I figured I may as well take a look, just in case, and found a ton of lectures on ancient and mediaeval history.
I took advantage of the free month at sign-up just to get an idea of the quality of the videos, and dived into the section on the Middle Ages...
First, to be clear - these are lectures. Most of the time there is nothing on the screen but the lecturer and his podium. They are also old - the ones I'm currently working through were filmed in 2001, though I doubt too much has changed in our understanding of them over the past 15 years.
Secondly, they are somewhat dull and dry because of the format. I had to grit my teeth and force myself to be patient to even begin to get through the first one.
BUT - these lectures are less about the political history and more about the social history. Which means there's far more focus on everyday living and society than I expected - the part of history I really love.
Because they're full of nuggets of information, I've found the lectures surprisingly inspirational for my own writing. Even sections I thought I knew and would otherwise be bored with have resulted in hundreds or thousands of words in notes.
To be clear, there's nothing here that you couldn't find in good books. Something that does help is that there is a logical order to the lectures, with each one rolling into the next topic.
Also - while I found some of the details inspired my own writing, that may not be the case for everyone else.
However, as I post anything that helps me up in the resources section, I'll add this.
My caveat is that I'm only signed-up for the first month's free trial, and will cancel within that period - I can make time to watch a lot of the videos relatively quickly. Personally, I feel too broke to spend $20/month on video lectures, though to be fair the price is hardly expensive by comparison to research books.
Just in case anyone's interested.
Welcome to The Great Courses Plus | The Great Courses Plus (this is his link)
I figured I may as well take a look, just in case, and found a ton of lectures on ancient and mediaeval history.
I took advantage of the free month at sign-up just to get an idea of the quality of the videos, and dived into the section on the Middle Ages...
First, to be clear - these are lectures. Most of the time there is nothing on the screen but the lecturer and his podium. They are also old - the ones I'm currently working through were filmed in 2001, though I doubt too much has changed in our understanding of them over the past 15 years.
Secondly, they are somewhat dull and dry because of the format. I had to grit my teeth and force myself to be patient to even begin to get through the first one.
BUT - these lectures are less about the political history and more about the social history. Which means there's far more focus on everyday living and society than I expected - the part of history I really love.
Because they're full of nuggets of information, I've found the lectures surprisingly inspirational for my own writing. Even sections I thought I knew and would otherwise be bored with have resulted in hundreds or thousands of words in notes.
To be clear, there's nothing here that you couldn't find in good books. Something that does help is that there is a logical order to the lectures, with each one rolling into the next topic.
Also - while I found some of the details inspired my own writing, that may not be the case for everyone else.
However, as I post anything that helps me up in the resources section, I'll add this.
My caveat is that I'm only signed-up for the first month's free trial, and will cancel within that period - I can make time to watch a lot of the videos relatively quickly. Personally, I feel too broke to spend $20/month on video lectures, though to be fair the price is hardly expensive by comparison to research books.
Just in case anyone's interested.
