Showing results by publisher "The Great Courses" in Europe

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.

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.

How did communism become such a pervasive economic and political philosophy? Why did it first take root in early 20th-century Russia? These and other questions are part of a fascinating story whose drama has few equals in terms of sheer scale, scope, or human suffering and belief. These 12 lectures invite you to go inside communism’s journey from a collection of political and economic theories to a revolutionary movement that rocked the world.

Know thy enemy. That's what the wisdom of history teaches us. And Adolf Hitler was surely the greatest enemy ever faced by modern civilization. Over half a century later, the horror, fascination, and questions still linger: How could a man like Hitler and a movement like Nazism come to power in 20th-century Germany – an industrially developed country with a highly educated population? How were the Nazis able to establish the foundations of a totalitarian regime in such a short time and hurl all of Europe – and the world – into a devastating war that would consume so many millions of lives? Professor Childers has designed this gripping 12-lecture course to shed light on these and other questions that have plagued generations.

For much of the past five centuries, the history of the European continent has been a history of chaos, its civilization thrown into turmoil by ferocious wars or bitter religious conflicts - sometimes in combination - that have made and remade borders, created and eliminated entire nations, and left a legacy that is still influencing our world.This 36-lecture series from an award-winning teacher and honored scholar pursues an explanation for this chaos that goes beyond the obvious ones of political ambition, religious intolerance, the pursuit of state power, or the fear of another state's aspirations.

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.

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.

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.

Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire painted a portrait of the Roman Empire in a long, debilitating slide to oblivion, but now historians have reevaluated this picture to create a radically different understanding of the period now known as "late antiquity." Far from being a period of decline and fall, late antiquity marked one of history's great turning points.

This lecture series takes you on a far-reaching journey around the globe - from China to the Americas to New Zealand - to shed light on how two dozen of the top discoveries, inventions, political upheavals, and ideas since 1400 have shaped the modern world. In just 24 thought-provoking lectures, you'll get the amazing story of how life as we know it developed. Starting in the early 15th century and culminating in the age of social media, you'll encounter astounding threads that weave through the centuries, joining these turning points in ways that may come as a revelation.

Western civilization is closely associated with reason and science, and with exceptional accomplishments in art, architecture, music, and literature.Yet it has also been characterized by widespread belief in the supernatural and the irrational - with mystics who have visions of the divine and entire movements of people who wait in fervent anticipation of the apocalypse.

Roughly 2,500 years ago, the Athenian people established a radical democracy in which power derived from the votes of everyday citizens. At a time when local governments ranged from oligarchy to tyranny, the elite classes of Athens gradually ceded power to the inexperienced masses, whose votes served as referendums for everything from taxation to war to welfare. The sequence of events that led to this development is astonishing, and the society that flourished under Athenian democracy is one of the greatest - even if greatly flawed - achievements in world history.

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....

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.

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.

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.

This series of 24 fascinating lectures draws on the latest modern scholarship to explore the lives of four medieval women who still shimmer in the modern imagination: Heloise, the abbess and mistress of Abelard; the prophet Hildegard of Bingen; Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine; and Joan of Arc. These lectures exemplify today's golden age of medieval scholarship, in which the role women played in medieval life is being clarified for the first time.

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.