Ashton Nichols

Brief narrative biographies of Emerson, Thoreau, William Ellery Channing, Theodore Parker, Amos Bronson Alcott and Louisa May Alcott explaining how they relate to the Transcendental movement of the 19th Century which in turn shaped many of our modern American ideas. I really liked his coverage of Ralph Waldo Emerson as well as the Alcotts, but I think the professor was a little subjective about Thoreau. He made several statements in such a way that it seemed that was the *obvious* conclusion, without marking why or how that conclusion was reached, and no it wasn't the conclusion I would have reached on my own. This is the only Teaching Company course I've ordered where I was tempted to skip over parts completely, and I got a lot of scrubbing done listening to this course. ;) On the whole, however, an interesting look at where ideas of the modern American came from and what they mean to us.… (altro)