This course of thirty-six lectures introduces the student to the history of the English language, from its origins as a dialect of the Germanic-speaking peoples, through the literary and cultural documents of its 1500 year span, to the state of American speech of the present day.

Examines the causes of the American Civil War, why the North won, how military campaigns unfolded, and how the war affected various elements of American society.

Presents 24 lectures discussing the flowering of European medieval civilization between 1000 and 1300, with examination of social conditions, intellectual and religious history, and political developments.

Was Christopher Columbus's voyage to the Americas in 1492 the most important event in the history of the world? Professor Eakin's provocative answer is a resounding "Yes" - as he presents his case in an intriguing series of 24 lectures. He argues that the voyage gave birth to the distinct identity of the Americas today by creating a collision between three distinct cultures - European, African, and Native American - that radically transformed the

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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. A 1492 whose biggest event - in the region that would eventually become Spain - was the

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For well over 2,000 years, much of our fundamental "desire to know" has focused on science. Our commitment to science and technology has been so profound that these stand as probably the most powerful influences on human culture. To truly understand our Western heritage, our contemporary society, and ourselves as individuals, we need to know what science is and how it developed.In this 36-lecture series, one of science's most acclaimed teachers

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The world of mathematics contains some of the greatest ideas of humankind--ideas comparable to the works of Shakespeare, Plato, and Michelangelo. These mathematical ideas can add texture, beauty, and wonder to your life, without being a mathematician! This course explores the fourth dimension, coincidences, fractals, aesthetics, the allure of number, geometry, and how great mathematical ideas arise, along with learning to think abstractly, to grasp...

Would you like to know how the universe works? The science that has found many of the answers to that profound and age-old question is particle physics, the study of those impossibly tiny particles with unbelievably strange names : bosons and leptons, quarks and neutrinos. Steven Pollock translates the language of the remarkable science that, in only 100 years, has unlocked the secrets of the basic forces of nature. You will become familiar with the...

Professor Robert Greenberg does for you what even someone as knowledgeable in music as that great composer and friend of Mozart's, Joseph Haydn, had to do to fully appreciate Mozart's brilliance: sit down with his music and carefully examine it. Professor Greenberg takes you deep inside the structure of Mozart's chamber masterworks to reveal his hand at work.

The "Long Debate" on the nature of truth, the scale of real values, the life one should aspire to live, the character of justice, the sources of law, and the terms of civic and political life is encompassed by the name philosophy. Three persistent themes--understood as problems--are knowledge, conduct, and governance, on which there is a storehouse of insights, some so utterly persuasive as to have shaped thought itself. Beginning with Plato and Aristotle,...