The Western Tradition by Eugen Weber: 52 Video Lectures

It is a plea­sure to have this course avail­able! Weber was such a remark­able pro­fes­sor. I do not think I had this par­tic­u­lar course from him at UCLA. Instead I took upper lev­el class­es.
Anoth­er pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus once com­ment­ed that a sign that the UCLA Dept. of His­to­ry was mature, was that Weber was select­ed as Chair­man of the Dept. of His­to­ry because he lacked a doc­tor­ate.

It sud­den­ly came to mind the won­der­ful lec­tures of Dr. Eugene Weber. I would often watch this series of lec­tures on PBS in the 80s/90s trans­fixed by his com­mand of the Eng­lish lan­guage. His elo­cu­tion was mes­mer­iz­ing. I thought him Eng­lish (as am I) so per­fect was his use of the lan­guage. I have just dis­cov­ered that he passed away in 2007, and I find myself sad­dened to know that he is gone. I could have met him as he lived for many years in LA. I know I would have liked him very much. I am so very glad that his incom­pa­ra­ble lec­tures are avail­able on this site. I will enjoy watch­ing them. Thank you for that.

if you can find this, get it. in my opin­ion it is the great­est thing ever put on tv. thank you, pbs(wliw tv, long island) for keep­ing this series on tv for so long.

ace — Your com­ment about expand­ing the video is very recent. I have MOST of these episodes, on VHS, as tran­scribed from edu­ca­tion­al cours­es that orig­i­nat­ed-from the KET (KY Educ. Tele­vi­sion net­work). I’d like to fill-in the GAPS, so would you rec­om­mend an RSS feed? I have two, decent (but, old) PCs, a decent SONY VAIO, but also a new­ly-bought Apple. I’m won­der­ing WHICH com­put­er would be the best, to obtain the feeds. Thanks!

I saw Eugen Weber for the first time this morn­ing at 4 am on PBS. It was fas­ci­nat­ing. When the pro­gram end­ed I saw his name in the cred­its and did a google search. That is how I found this site. PBS announced they are show­ing The Dark Ages tomor­row which is def­i­nite­ly a rea­son to rise at 4 am.

Can any­one tell me whether Weber’s asser­tion that Christ’s “ser­mon on the mount” was writ­ten in 109 b.c. has any valid­i­ty? I can find noth­ing.

Annen­berg Learn­er used to sell the DVDs, for far too high a price, but their web­site now says are now out of stock. EarthStation1 adver­tis­es that they have the DVDs for sale for about $69, which is about the right price. But beware of EarthStation1, because of their bad rep­u­ta­tion. Very high risk that they can­not be trust­ed to fill your order, yet they will take your mon­ey.

I’ve done some research and I’ve found out the rights our now back with WGBH Boston who pro­duced the series in 1989 (a live a few miles away!). As far as I can tell they don’t have any plans to do any­thing with it. The WGBH Media Library is in charge of it. Per­haps peo­ple can call the WGBH media library which would demon­strate that the series has a fol­low­ing. Just call the main num­ber and ask for the media library. If they hear from enough peo­ple, it could prompt them to stream it or offer it as DVD. WGBH has pro­duced many series over the years and is real­ly a great PBS sta­tion.

I have been watch­ing this since it debuted in 1988, the year I grad­u­at­ed in phi­los­o­phy. Through­out that time I kept read­ing his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy, inspired in no small part by Eugen Weber’s lec­tures, which I could watch online once the inter­net got up and run­ning smooth­ly. They kept me sane dur­ing dif­fi­cult times. For years I put off buy­ing the DVD set from Annen­berg web­site, due to the gen­teel pover­ty asso­ci­at­ed with being a high school teacher. Just as I was fin­ish­ing an M.A. in his­to­ry, I had enough spare change to order the whole pack­age (DVDs, books, course mate­ri­als, etc.). But when I went to the Annen­berg site, The West­ern Tra­di­tion was no longer avail­able. I agree with you, Chuck, we should bom­bard WGBH Boston with requests to re-release it. I would help lead the charge in that cam­paign.

I can’t rec­om­mend this high­ly enough! So many bril­liant insights, expressed clear­ly and to the point. To this day I quote some of these insights when­ev­er they’re rel­e­vant.

Dave, I dis­cov­ered this series on WHYY 12 as well in the late ’90s. It was a trea­sure to find.

Thank you for demand­ing a cor­rec­tion to the errors of Prof Weber con­cern­ing the rich and high fer­til­i­ty of that region in the world which is the rea­son for nam­ing it the “Fer­tile Cres­cent”. I want to add that The entire Ara­bi­an Penin­su­la was very fer­tile till cen­turies lat­er with sub-cli­mate changes that deser­ti­fi­ca­tion occurred leav­ing South­ern regions of the penin­su­la includ­ing Yemen and parts of Oman still fer­tile up to this date.

Thank you

Nad­wa Per­ket. San Diego. CA