The Great Courses Reviews

I am just concluding "Early Humans: Ice, Stone and Survival" and I am sad to see it ended. I have complete about a half dozen "Great Courses" lecture series and this one is by far the best. Suzanne Pilar Birch has presented us with a mighty tour de force. Every one of the twenty lectures is a peek into the the most up-to- date sites the methodology, dating and analysis of the findings and the interpretation, anthropological, and geographical that resulted. She introduces us to the names of the dig leaders and researchers. She lets us know about the techniques, technologies and their limits and strengths. She has done an amazing amount of preparation for each and every lecture but her delivery is smooth and sure. This is not, however, a lecture series for the layman. At least a general feeling for the topics is helpful. I taught some of what is on Doctor Pilar Birch's presenting and for me this is a refresher and an update but it was also a pleasure. for those fresh to the field it should excite them to dig-in to learn more. Dr. Suzanne Pilar Birch puts to shame some others who shamble in bearing scuffed and dusty products that are just their old, biased loafers without even a hint of new shoe polish.

They ised to be great, now they're selling out to ancient aliens and islamophobia. And since thwy launched Windrium their customer service basically disapearedand was replaced by rude stubborn trolls that doesn't want to hear that anything is wrong with their website(which us useless with more viruses and trackers than a porn site)

Do not even attempt to look at this website. I went on the website put my information in and was on the website only 5 minutes. Today I had a charge for 160.88. I didn't realize that I had signed up for a trial. When I called to get a refund they said they don't give refunds. BIG SCAM....

Having been to Yellowstone, I looked so forward to the two segments devoted to it. However when I watched them I was very very disappointed. Illustrated with hundreds of still photos don't do Yellowstone justice...it made it stagnate and boring.

We watched both Yellowstone LECTURES...the host looked like he had spent a week or so wearing his pants while camping...and the material was so factual to the point of the whole thing being boring...and with no film...none of the excitement of Yellowstone was conveyed.

We decided to just donate the whole series to a school in our neighborhood and forget it. Don't waste your money.

I have bought these courses for about 20 years, and have usually enjoyed them, except for the last one -- a history course that was full of factual errors and extreme bias. I tossed it out. Where you have to be VERY careful is in the ordering process! See what's ON SALE and make a telephone order, insisting on the course that's ON SALE, because another page of their website will show you that same course for 4x the price. I had a clerk on the phone insist that the ONLY one available was the course at 4x as much as the one on sale. I hung up on her and went back online, finally finding the ON SALE section, phoned again and ordered the course. After you order, you will be subjected to "the pitch"! Wouldn't you also like to buy ..............??? NO, I WOULD NOT. I'm buying ONE course, on sale at $34.95 -- THAT:S IT. . You have to be very firm while ordering from these people and extremely sure that you're getting the exact thing you want. They are tricky and I think they're right on the border of being crooked.

Typically high production value. The information is well presented by those knowledgeable in the field. Depending on the topic and the instructor the material may be slanted. For example, when it comes to the theology courses, I do not understand the inclusion of Bart Ehrman who has an overwhelmingly skeptic opinion. Why would you have a person who does not believe teaching what to believe?

On the other hand, the courses by William Cook are amazing and informative and well aligned with the "orthodox" position of historical Christianity.

Meaning, if you expect things to be 100 percent the way you believe you will be upset. At the same time you must not be too terribly familiar with higher education which frequently confronts the student with different and even radical ways of looking at a subject.

Bottom-line - If you see a course that looks interesting, do a quick search for the professor, see what he or she has written, taught, said, in the past and see if that is the type of person with the priorities you are interested in learning from.

I agree with the above review about left wing bias in the Great Courses. I mainly get the courses on science and mathematics. You can see the left wing bias in many of the course descriptions. For example, a new course has just come out, "Fighting Misinformation: Digital Media Literacy" with major support by IREX (International Research and Exchanges Board), which is a left wing propaganda organization. I don't object to people expressing their point of view, but I object when it is called education as a subterfuge for propaganda.

On the other hand, there are some courses that I thought would be biased and were not. The new course "The Rise of Marxism" by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, was surprisingly not biased, at least in my opinion. He didn't downplay the failure of Marxism as an ideology or the atrocities Marxism has engendered. Another one, Understanding the Misconceptions of Science, I was expecting a propaganda campaign targeted to fundamentalist Christians who doubt Evolution. But it was pretty good.

You have to look closely at the course descriptions. With the online version, Great Courses Plus, you can pick and choose courses, stop watching one that looks biased, and move on to another one. But if you have to buy the DVDs, then you should be careful.

I've purchased 70 courses from them. Most are science, astronomy, geology, photography etc.

NOTE: any website that controls its OWN 1-5 star reviews is a SHAM. Do you REALLY think you will get the WHOLE picture?

I've written about 40 reviews - most 4-5 star positive reviews. The process is as follows: the review is submitted then read and analyzed by their "politically correct" staff, then posted. If economically threatening (as this note is), then they call it "moderation" (censored).

They've CENSORED twice my review on the course Power Over People where I pointed out that the professor goes into great detail about the RIGHT-wing atrocities of 6M dead (genocide) and 70M dead in WW2.

However when it comes to the LEFT-wing communist atrocities of 20M dead under Stalin and 40M dead under Mao – the professor blathers to us with frivolous insignificance about Karl Mark’s furniture and burial site and other irrelevance.

WHAT does that tell you? Is this rocket science? They refused to post this.

So avoid buying any courses on history and especially politics.

I find the courses themselves exceptional but I have always listened to them in my car so I have always downloaded the audio version because the video version was useless to me (driving my car), the CDs were inconvenient (I don't walk around with a CD player) and the audio versions were reasonably priced. It seems that Great Courses has teamed up with Audible and Audible requires that I maintain a subscription with it which I don't want to do or I pay for a "one-off" at a seriously inflated price. As a result, I will be checking into other options.