The Wisdom of History

J. Rufus Fears attempts to extract "key themes" from world history that we can learn from. His condescending tone makes it clear that this "wisdom" is his viewpoint. Any other beliefs are not acceptable. One point he keeps returning to is that history is caused by single men making decisions. Their failure to have proper foresight lead to the fall of empires. Those that have the proper character have a lasting positive impact. He views other events and cultural currents as not being nearly as important. However, even his own lectures contradict this. Some societies (like Russia) have historically preferred a strong leader to "freedom". This background culture helped support the rise of communism. The French culture set the grounds for a revolution. The United States needed the strong rights that were part of British culture. Without this, George Washington would have never been a significant leader.
We are limited by the single thread of history that we have lived. If Napoleon had died in his youth, would the course of history significantly changed? Would somebody else have come in to do exactly what he did? Or would history have turned in a totally different direction? Most likely, the short term events would have been drastically different, but over a longer horizon, history would have proceeded very similarly to how it did. We can look in the past at bad decisions of leaders. However, we know the outcome. At that time, those decisions may have been the "best". It is easy to look back and say "these people were great rulers." But how much of this was pure luck, and how much was due to the person. There may be many other people that had a strong moral compass and the ability to cause a similar (or even better) outcome.

Books that made history

Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life is an awful attempt at indoctrination. He uses the literary selections to try to push his ideology.

I've listened to many Teaching Company courses, and this is easily one of the worst. A red flag should quickly go up when Nazis are mentioned after many literary works discussed.

I felt like the lecturer was talking down to the audience. He would summarize a work, and then describe why it should be important. The books discuss "profound" themes, and thus they should be considered great. He gives us the "appropriate" interpretation of the works, and why they should be important for us. Usually this importance has something to do with World War II.

Since he spends so much time summarizing, there is little direct incentive to actually read the works discussed. (After all, he gives the summary and the "meaning" we are supposed to get out of it.) However, in books that I have read recently, I have had interpretations vastly different than his. Perhaps the incentive is there to just figure out how he managed to mess up the interpretation of other works.

There are plenty of other "great books" audio courses out there that are much better. I would reccomend A Way With Words, Part II: Approaches to Literature It lacks the forced interpretation and does a better job of inspiring an interest in literature.