The Western Tradition

This new Annenberg/CPB Project telecourse sets out to survey the history of the world from the dawn of time to the present. The series is comprised of 52 half-hour programs, each featuring a lecture by author/professor Eugene Weber with accompanying film footage and stills. We sampled two programs: #2 The Ancient Egyptians and #25 The Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. In The Ancient Egyptians, Weber discusses the importance of the Nile River on all aspects of Egyptian life, briefly covers their achievements as a culture, and examines the rise and fall of the Pharaohs as political powers. In The Renaissance and the Age of Discovery, Weber looks at the gradual shift in both the arts and in the popular mind from a religiously strict medieval view of the world to a more humanistic, open to experiment atmosphere. He points out that the Renaissance artists and thinkers sought to glorify the greatness of man, rather than God. And their new, more secular society, was championed in the works of Erasmus, Giotto, Botticelli, Machiavelli, and Michelangelo, among others. Weber proposes that the same spirit which guided the Renaissance launched the Age of Discovery. His juxtaposition of, say, an Italian painter with a Portuguese explorer who shared chronology but little else in common, is the weakest and most arguable position taken during the program. Fortunately, he tempers this argument with the realities of the voyager's missions: 1) the spice trade, and 2) the extension of Christianity. Neither of which had much to do with the general Renaissance spirit. Weber, a professor of history at the University of California, is an amiable and engaging lecturer, who sprinkles his talks with equal amounts of witticisms and insights. An excellent choice for secondary school and university libraries, this would also be a superb cornerstone of a public library's video holdings on general history. (Available from: Annenberg/CPB Project, c/o Intellimation, P.O. Box 1922, Santa Barbara, CA 93116-1922;1-800-LEARNER.)