Showing results by publisher "The Great Courses" in Europe

In this gallery of extraordinary minds, you’ll encounter the leading lights of a world-shaping era, including figures such as Maimonides, Hildegard of Bingen, Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Abelard, and Francesco Petrarch. Professor Armstrong goes to great lengths to bring these historic figures to life, revealing both the great intellectual contributions and the personal strivings, challenges, and triumphs of some of history’s most remarkable human beings.

Complete your knowledge of the ancient world with this comprehensive look at the dozen empires that flourished in the 2,000 years before the conquests of Alexander the Great. Over the course of 36 insightful lectures, you'll follow the Egyptians, the Mycenaean Greeks, the Persians, the Carthaginians, and others as they rise to glory, create administrative and military structures, clash with one another, and eventually collapse.

In the 19th century, Europe was the crucible for most of the ideas, institutions, and "isms" that now shape the life of our entire planet-nationalism, capitalism, democracy, socialism, feminism, and the list goes on and on. But where did these ideas come from? Over the course of 24 sweeping lectures, Professor Kramer invites you to view intellectual history as a series of overlapping, interconnected dialogues....

Guiding you chronologically through the life and times of this master statesman, Professor Shelden takes you from the dawn of Churchill’s political career to his final years in a much-changed geopolitical landscape. You’ll examine Churchill’s beginnings as a young liberal statesman, his rise to the Admiralty and his relentless push for an imposing naval force, his fight against the Nazis, his equally dramatic postwar career suspended between two different cold wars (against the Soviets and Britain’s Labour party), and more.

In The Black Death: New Lessons from Recent Research, celebrated medievalist Dorsey Armstrong shares the fascinating new story of this old pandemic—revealed by dedicated researchers working with 21st-century technologies and a knowledge of language and history that now provide input from all geographic areas of the medieval world. In seven engaging lectures, Professor Armstrong corrects explanations of the pandemic that are now known to be inaccurate and offers a more robust description of plague biology than has ever been known.

This series of 36 fascinating lectures is a chronological journey into the story of Victorian Britain, from the unexpected ascension to the throne of teenaged Princess Victoria in 1837 to her death in 1901 as the Boer War neared its end.Presented with all of Victoria's strengths and foibles left intact by an award-winning teacher and author, the lectures invite you to reflect on both the positive and negative aspects of her reign.

Only three lifetimes ago, Europe was a farming society ruled by families of monarchs. But with two seismic tremors - capitalism and democracy - Europe's economic and royal foundations were shattered forever and modern European history began.In this series of 48 fascinating lectures, Professor Childers makes the history of Europe from the 1750s to the present - events both horrible and magnificent - as immediate as today's headlines, employing the historian's craft and a storyteller's skill to find the causes of what otherwise could seem to be the march of folly.

Despite the papacy's enormous influence, how much do you really know about this ancient and powerful institution? Catholics and non-Catholics alike will enjoy these 24 illuminating lectures about this remarkable institution. Professor Noble gives you priceless insights into the dramatic history of the papal office and the lives of the men who represented it. Filled with interesting stories and remarkable insights, this course promises to educate, enlighten, and entertain you.

As the Black Death swept across Europe, killing up to a half of the population in certain areas, a young Geoffrey Chaucer came of age in England. While he and his family avoided the worst of the disease, all were shaped by its presence and impact on the British island. With expert Simon Doubleday, professor of history at Hofstra University, in After the Plague, examine medieval literature like The Canterbury Tales for firsthand accounts from minority voices not typically heard from in the period.

Though it ended five centuries ago, the medieval era continues to permeate our world in far-reaching ways. Whether we pay attention to them or not, the influences and imprints of the Middle Ages are all around us, sometimes evident and sometimes less so. In these 36 revealing lectures, you’ll learn how to recognize the medieval impacts on the modern world, and to grasp their significance and implications. The Medieval Legacy offers you a deep look at a stunning millennium of change and innovation which continues to inform our contemporary world.

These 12 lectures by Professors Cook and Herzman will give you a rounded, fully informed introduction to the luminous Francis of Assisi and will tell the intellectually and spiritually rewarding story of how his influence has glowed across the centuries.Just who was Assisi? Despite his continuing influence and the fairly ample writings about him that date from his own time, Francis remains somewhat elusive in history. Yet these lectures expertly unlock two sources that are the most revealing and plentiful-written narratives of Francis's life and the images created for Franciscan churches.

The Late Middle Ages-the two centuries from c. 1300 to c. 1500 - might seem like a distant era, but students of history are still trying to reach a consensus about how it should be interpreted. Was it an era of calamity or rebirth? Was it still clearly medieval or the period in which humanity took its first decisive steps into modernity? These 24 provocative lectures introduce you to the age's major events, personalities, and developments, and arms you with the essentials you need to form your own ideas about this age of extremes.

Ask anyone about the significance of the year 1492, and you're almost certain to hear something about Christopher Columbus and the discovery of the New World. But there is also a perspective on 1492 far different than the one most of us know-one that is more complete and complex. A 1492 when there was no country called Spain and no language called Spanish.

Beginning in the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation and the Scientific Revolution began to erode the position of authority. As a result, new philosophers began constructing a universal rationality independent of faith. This schism fundamentally changed the course of Western civilization, and it has had consequences that remain with us to this day. This 36-lecture journey will help you understand exactly what the debate has been and will continue to be about.

The Vikings evoke striking images of horned helmets, battle axes, and merciless coastal raids. Remembered for their shocking brutality and impressive naval prowess, these marauding pirates from the North have inspired poetry, fantasy novels, plays, symphonies, and even comic book heroes over the last 12 centuries. But do any of these enduring tropes reflect reality? Who were the Vikings really? What do we know about the period that bears their name? Explore these questions and more in The Viking Age, a 12-lecture course that corrects the record on a transformative period in world history.

Great castles are invaluable historical artifacts, that give us an incredible window into the medieval world. Castles were part of the very fabric of medieval society, and profoundly influenced the political, economic, demographic, and social evolution of Europe. In the 24 compelling lectures of Great Castles of Europe, Professor Victoria L. McAlister, of Towson University guides you through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, highlighting outstanding and historically significant castles of these extraordinary times.

Sex. The word makes some people giggle or blush, while others may draw back in discomfort. So, why do we find it so difficult to talk openly about sex? Much of our reticence in discussing and acknowledging the realities of sex comes, at least in part, from a unique time and place: medieval Europe. In the 12 episodes of Sex in the Middle Ages, Professor Jennifer McNabb and a panel of experts in medieval history and literature will take you back to the period between the fall of Rome and the rise of the Renaissance to explore the ideals and realities of sex and sexuality.

How did one man-a humble monk and Bible professor-spark a religious rebellion that changed the course of history? What made Martin Luther's theology so explosive in 16th-century Europe? How did this late-medieval man launch the Protestant Reformation and help create the modern world? And how should we think of him: hero or heretic, rebel or tormented soul? Find out the answer to these questions and more in this series of 24 engaging lectures.

In London in the Time of Dickens, you’ll get the unique opportunity to experience the British capital through the eyes of a literary master whose work is inextricably tied to the city and its rich history. Throughout 12 lectures taught by Professor Lillian Nayder of Bates College, you’ll tour the city of London in a time of rapid transformation through the life and work of Charles Dickens, uncovering the history of the metropolis, while also witnessing the everyday experiences of Londoners from all walks of life as Dickens represents them.

As a sequel to European Thought and Culture in the 19th Century, Professor Kramer tackles the major intellectual themes and debates that decisively shaped 20th-century European culture. These 24 lectures cover an amazingly wide range of thinkers and writers, the key historical circumstances and challenges they faced, and the fascinating and subtle ways in which their works relate to one another and to the larger story of modern European culture.