Lectures by Dr. David Zarefsky, Professor of Argumentation and Debate and Professor of Communication Studies, Northwestern University, cover the history of rhetoric and debate as well as analysis of different types of arguments in various situations.

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.

"This course introduces principles of physics through their application to everyday life"--Guidebook.

The writings that make up the New Testament stand at the very foundation of Christianity. But while Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the other books of the New Testament are known to almost everyone, the writings that Christians produced in the decades that followed these earliest compositions remain shrouded in virtual anonymity. Who were the Apostolic Fathers? Why were they given that name? And what windows into the shaping of Christianity's canon,...