Odyssey of the West IV: Towards Enlightenment

A big dip in quality for this series. The history focus becomes very scattershot trying to fit in the big changes in political philosophy from Machiavelli to Hobbes, while discussing artists from Giotto to Michelangelo, the northern renaissance, then back to global history with the early New World explorers. We get a lot of discussion of Luther, but the reformation (and counterreformation) gets short shrift, and the religious wars get a rather implausible rounding off in that "people just grew tired" of them.
It makes complete sense that a western civilization history would become harder to conduct as we get closer to the present and the tendrils of history really start diverging. Choosing what to cover and how is tough, and this falls show more short in trying to do too much at once. show less