Catalog Search Results
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 21
Language
English
Description
The Ottoman campaign to capture Vienna was one of the largest and most significant in Ottoman history. Study the background of the siege and the military technology and strategy on both sides. Follow the unfolding engagement and the pivotal role of the Polish-Lithuanian armies, and grasp how Vienna marked a turning point for the Ottoman Empire.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 20
Language
English
Description
In this monumental episode of the samurai era, learn about the underlying politics and the major figures in the conflict, including one whose wavering loyalty took an astonishing turn on the battlefield. Track the events that unified Japan under a dynasty of shoguns who would rule for 250 years.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 8
Language
English
Description
Jump to the 1st millennium B.C. and the mighty Assyrian Empire. The palace reliefs reveal a warlike society in which the king reinforces order, as revealed in the famous Lion Hunt scenes. As he battles the lions, the king proves he is greater in power than the threatening beast and all that it represents. The reliefs demonstrate the apogee of artistic skill in the Assyrian court.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 32
Language
English
Description
Dive headfirst into the complex, confusing, circular dream world of Finnegans Wake, Joyce's final book. Professor Conner gives you a way into the work-which ostensibly tells the dream of a Dublin pub owner and family man-and you'll come away with an understanding of how Joyce tapped into the mythic patterns of life within Ireland.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 41
Language
English
Description
The questions of when Rome fell: and why: are arguably the most famous ongoing historical debates in the Western tradition. One German scholar has even posited 210 plausible answers to the why. This episode examines both the questions and the debates that swirl around them.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 21
Language
English
Description
The moon landing expanded humanity's sense of the possible. Learn how the space program grew out of advances in rocketry during World War II and advanced rapidly due to cold war paranoia exacerbated by the launch of Sputnik.
7) Writing and Civilization: From Ancient Worlds to Modernity: Egyptian - The First Great Decipherment
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 13
Language
English
Description
Before Jean-Francois Champollion deciphered hieroglyphic writing in 1822, no one had been able to read a word of Egyptian. Why were Egyptian history and its ancient language and writing system forgotten? How did early attempts at decipherment go astray? Get the answers here as viewers learn what clues led Champollion to success.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 17
Language
English
Description
Go back to a time when the Olympic Games were a sacred event. The famous discus thrower represents a new development in the history of sculpture because of the way it shows motion. This episode delves into the sports culture of ancient Greece and reveals the technique behind the drama of Myron's sculpture.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 2
Language
English
Description
Explore the medical understanding of plague, as seen in the 6th-century Plague of Justinian, the Black Death of the 1300s, and the 19th-century Third Pandemic. Examine the three predominant varieties of plague, the symptomatology of each, and scientific theories as to the nature and transmission of the disease that ravaged Europe in the 14th century.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 23
Language
English
Description
Consider what it must have been like to be among the very first historians, not only practicing your art, but having to define it and its standards, as well. See how fundamental questions about writing history were answered by Herodotus, Thucydides, and Sima Qian.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 12
Language
English
Description
Discover how the American middle class was a direct product of industrialization and the new employment categories it created. Investigate the key features of the new middle class lifestyle, encompassing suburban living, consumption, and leisure. Also identify defining middle-class values, from respectability and manners to personal hygiene and the cult of domesticity.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 43
Language
English
Description
Learn how the chaotic three-and-a-half centuries that followed the dissolution of the Han Empire spawned new philosophical and religious yearnings and paved the way for the founding of the next great dynasty.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 6
Language
English
Description
In the late Gilded Age there was wide agreement that troubling trends threatened the young republic. Explore rising public anxiety over the power of big business and the era's economic inequality, governmental corruption, and violent conflict between labor and capital. Take account of how business leaders responded to critics and reformers.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 9
Language
English
Description
Cursed in the Bible as "the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth," Babylon is much more fascinating and strange than you might think. Examine the "Queen of the Night," a nude woman who is part animal and part human. This curious mixture of the erotic and the terrifying creates a mesmerizing masterpiece filled with mystery.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 22
Language
English
Description
Discover how the father of the Chinese nation combined ruthlessness and vision to unify his country, create the largest empire that part of the world had known, and execute a clear and coherent philosophy that would be China's political model for almost a millennium.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 6
Language
English
Description
An altogether different-and darker-mythological adventure story is Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece. In pondering the best-known versions of both Jason's story and his wife, Medea's, you'll begin to see Jason as a failed hero and Medea as more than just the woman who murdered her own children.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 15
Language
English
Description
Thomas Malory's massive retelling of the Arthurian saga became a benchmark for all writers who came after him. Learn how Malory's text introduced the Pentecostal Oath, a sacred code of ethics sworn to by the knights, which Malory tests throughout the narrative as a model for noble thought and action.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 11
Language
English
Description
Experience what it was like to be raised a Spartan man or woman, the changes in military tactics and equipment that made their armies so feared, and the tragic flaw that guaranteed that this Greek city-state's power, no matter how widespread or intimidating, could not endure.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 48
Language
English
Description
A discussion of the early 20th-century historian Henri Pirenne puts Charlemagne in a new perspective and underlines why it is so important to understand each of the civilizations you have studied not as a separate entity, but in the context of all the others.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 5
Language
English
Description
Explore the fertility theme in the first 3-D sculpture of the course. "Ram Caught in a Thicket" was excavated from the Great Death Pit at Ur. In addition to telling us about royal burials, the sculpture tells us about the society's wealth, its relationship with animals, and the religious role of the rulers and lords.
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