As traders and raiders, explorers and colonists, they reshaped the world between eastern North America and the Asian steppe. For a millennium, though, their history has largely been filtered through the writings of their victims. Based on the latest archaeological and textual evidence, Children of Ash and Elm tells the story of the Vikings on their own terms: their politics, their cosmology, their art and culture. From Björn Ironside, who led an expedition to sack Rome, to Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, the most travelled woman in the world, Price shows us the real Vikings, not the caricatures they have become in popular culture and history.

    But how many of us can place that event in the context of the entire dramatic year in which it took place? From the death of Edward the Confessor in early January to the Christmas coronation of Duke William of Normandy, there is an almost uncanny symmetry, as well as a relentlessly exciting surge, of events leading to and from Hastings.

    It begins with Julius Caesar's invasion in the first century BC and goes on to tell of the kings and bishops, monks and nuns who helped to develop government and convert the people to Christianity during these crucial formative years. Relating the deeds of great men and women but also describing landscape, customs and ordinary lives, this is a rich, vivid portrait of an emerging church and nation by the 'Father of English History'.Leo Sherley-Price's translation from the Latin brings us an accurate and readable version of Bede's History. This edition includes Bede's Letter to Egbert, denouncing false monasteries; and The Death of Bede, an admirable eye-witness account by Cuthbert, monk and later Abbot of Jarrow, both translated by D. H. Farmer.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

    Principe on the relation between science and religion from early times to the present.Two crucial forces, science and religion, helped shape Western civilization and continue to interact in our daily lives. What is the nature of their relationship? When do they conflict, and how do they influence each other in pursuit of knowledge and truth? Contrary to prevailing notions that they must perpetually clash, science and theology have actually been partners in an age-old adventure. This course covers both the historical sweep and philosophical flashpoints of this epic interaction.6 audio discs (1 hour each); 68-page course guidebook which includes professor biography, statement of course scope, lecture outlines and notes, a timeline, glossary, biographical notes, and bibliography.Lecture 1. Science and religionLecture 2. The warfare thesisLecture 3. Faith and reason: Scripture and natureLecture 4. God and nature: Miracles and demonsLecture 5. Church, Copernicus, and GalileoLecture 6. Galileo's trial. Lecture 7. God the watchmakerLecture 8. Natural theology and arguments from designLecture 9. Geology, cosmology, and Biblical chronologyLecture 10. Darwin and responses to evolutionLecture 11. Fundamentalism and creationismLecture 12. Past, present, and future

    In this fascinating series of 36 lectures, an award-winning teacher leads you on a vivid journey through Mesopotamian history-from Neolithic times to the age of Alexander the Great-and into the lives of mighty emperors, struggling farmers, ambitious merchants, and palace servants to reveal why this ancient culture occupies such a foundational position in our history.The lectures look back to the time when the first cities arose in Mesopotamia and kings created complex bureaucracies to rule their expanding territories, thus fostering the invention of writing and other technologies. You peer into the lives and fortunes of Mesopotamia's people and learn about the birth of the urban lifestyle.Professor Castor creates a detailed image not only of larger Mesopotamian society but of life on the level of the individual Mesopotamian as well. Among the many fascinating insights into daily Mesopotamian life you examine are how they ate, worked, learned, worshiped, married, and reared children; used scientific ideas to help them order and understand the natural world; engaged with their powerful neighbors in Egypt, Syria, and Anatolia (modern-day Turkey); waged war and experienced peace; and endured the collapse of their cities.

    The infamous Jack the Ripper slayings. The alleged survival of Anastasia Romanov, the youngest daughter of the murdered Tsar. Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong's public fall from grace. The Chicago Tylenol poisonings and the copycat crimes that followed. Step into the world of forensic science and study the most fascinating crimes and mysteries from the last two centuries in the 24 lectures of Forensic History: Crimes, Frauds, and Scandals . Professor Murray, a forensic anthropologist with nearly 30 years of experience in the field, has crafted lectures that are a remarkable blend of storytelling and science - a whirlwind tour that takes you from the gas-lit streets of Victorian London to small-town America. As you journey around the world and into the past, you'll re-examine modern history's great crimes and scandals using the tools and insights of forensic science. In doing so, you'll learn how cutting-edge advancements in science and technology are applied to investigations and how to evaluate evidence and think like a forensic scientist. Using her extensive background in the field and her skill at weaving riveting stories, Professor Murray invites you peer over the shoulders of investigators as they examine some of the most famous crimes in history, as well as cases that shed light on what happens when the justice system goes awry. Whether they're controversial or by-the-book, solved or unsolved, hot or cold, these cases are an opportunity to gain deeper insight into the historic and cutting-edge methods and tools forensic scientists use on the job. Having participated in hundreds of investigations in America and abroad, Professor Murray intersperses these historical examinations with some of her own, equally intriguing, personal experiences.Please note there is a 293 page book included in this course so please do not Notabook again.

    One such change was the Agricultural Revolution, with the domestication of plants and animals and a shift in survival strategies from hunting and gathering to farming and animal husbandry. Simultaneous with that was the Urban Revolution, the founding of cities. We discuss the current thinking on these revolutions in human existence and their relationship. Much of that discussion takes place in the context of the earliest city, ?atalh?y?k, and a second Neolithic foundation, Jericho. Both of these also provide material to explore the role of religion in the very earliest communities, to ask its role in city formation, and to explore the place of religious structures in city identity. Burial practices at the two cities also illuminate early ideas of property ownership and the definition of the family home.In the Bronze Age, cities grew most rapidly in civilizations founded in the great river valleys, from the Nile in Egypt, to the Euphrates in Mesopotamia, to the Indus in modern Pakistan and India. In these cities made of mud, we can trace elements of domestic life and civic spaces. Three of the cities, Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley and Kahun and Deir el-Medina in Egypt, have no recognizable public buildings. Yet the reasons for that negative evidence for civic life differ wildly, as do the structures of these societies. At Deir el-Medina, we encounter some of the oldest conclusive evidence for private enterprise in an ancient city. We also begin to see how social organization is reflected in city formation. The Sumerian city of Uruk, the first megacity in world history, provides the model for the monumentalization of religious structures and their integration in the civic space and government of the city. Finally, in the last of the Bronze Age mud-brick cities we will discuss, Amarna in Egypt, we are able to analyze city design as a deliberate means of changing the social structure of Egyptian society. This revolutionary city takes the lessons of Uruk on religion in the service of the state and develops them to reinforce the rule of the pharaoh, Akhenaten. Here, we also introduce the concept of the house as both an economic unit and a domestic space, an important indicator of the role of the house in the ancient city that we examine in Akrotiri, Athens, and Olynthus.In the four Mediterranean Bronze Age cities of Knossos, Akrotiri, Mycenae, and Tiryns, regular stone architecture makes an appearance. These cities, although they arise from different cultures, share some characteristics in common; we will discuss the idea and mechanisms of the spread of culture across the eastern Mediterranean. The theme of the role of religion continues to be an important one, and the size and placement of religious structures and their consequent meanings are debated with material from Knossos, Akrotiri, and Mycenae and comparisons back to ?atalh?y?k. Mycenae and Tiryns are contrasted with Uruk in their dedication of the high ground in the community, not to the gods, but to the king in the placement of his palace complex. This represents a heretofore unprecedented shift in the focus of urban design.Throughout the Neolithic and Bronze ages, it is possible to point out changes in urban forms, but the notion of “progress” in urban design?that is, reactions to what had come immediately before?is only truly visible with the multiple Greek foundations. We will examine a series of Greek cities?beginning with Athens in the 5th century B.C.; followed by Miletus, Olynthus, and Alexandria; and culminating at Pergamon?to illustrate what can be seen as progress in urban design. Athens in the 5th century has interesting correspondences to Uruk and Amarna. But at Miletus, a dramatic change in Greek urban design, Hippodamian planning, was invented and came to dominate the layout of many Greek and Roman cities with its variation of orthogonal planning. Inevitably, a new model of city design emerged that was anti-Hippodamian; the reasons for that are explored in one of the best examples of it, Pergamon.The examination of a number of Roman cities introduces in detail the issues of the benefits and challenges of urban life, particularly in the city of Rome itself. We also see remarkable variations in urban life in the Roman Empire, from Ostia in Italy to Karanis in Egypt. Rather than the standardized experience one might expect, we see regional variation and cultural identities that differ dramatically even across Roman North Africa.Finally, the last great city foundation of antiquity, Constantinople, encourages us to look backwards and chart its influences from the past and to look forward to its role as the model for the Middle Ages.

    This country house was home to Britain's most brilliant mathematical brains, like Alan Turing, and the scene of immense advances in technology—indeed, the birth of modern computing. The military codes deciphered there were instrumental in turning both the Battle of the Atlantic and the war in North Africa. But, though plenty has been written about the scientists and the codebreaking, fictional and non-fiction—from Robert Harris and Ian McEwan to Andrew Hodges' biography of Turing—what of the thousands of men and women who lived and worked there during the war? The first history for the general reader of life at Bletchley Park, this is also an amazing compendium of memories from people now in their eighties of skating on the frozen lake in the grounds (a depressed Angus Wilson, the novelist, once threw himself in), of a youthful Roy Jenkins—useless at codebreaking, of the high jinks at nearby accommodation hostels, and of the implacable secrecy that meant girlfriend and boyfriend working in adjacent huts knew nothing about each other's work.

    He’s had a pretty bad press: supposed usurper of Richard II’s crown and the focus of hatred in the Peasants’ Revolt (they torched his home, the Savoy Palace). Helen Carr will paint a complex portrait of a man who held the levers of power on the English and European stage, passionately upheld chivalric values, pressed for the Bible to be translated into English, patronised the arts … and, if you follow Shakespeare, gave the most beautiful oration on England (‘this sceptred isle… this blessed plot’). An engrossing drama of political machinations, violence, romance and tragedy played out at the cusp of a new era.

    And with this fascinating collection crafted from our extensive library of courses, you can now get a single course that represents 36 of our best lectures on literary works that changed the world.In the company of an unparalleled roster of award-winning professors from a range of disciplines, you'll get fresh perspectives on books you only thought you knew - and intriguing introductions to some works you may not have known played key roles in getting us to where we are today. These include The Analects, the Liber Abaci, A Dictionary of the English Language, The Jungle, The Feminine Mystique, and more.If you've taken another course with these professors before, get a reminder of just why you enjoyed them. And if you've never heard some of them before, who knows? You may just discover your next favorite Great Courses professor. More than that, you'll rediscover just how powerful the printed word can be. You'll also learn how the mark of a truly great book isn't that it just changes the lives of individual readers-but the lives of entire civilizations.

    For instance, it's not hard to envision a day when websites such as Facebook or Google Maps introduce a feature that allows real-time tracking of anyone you want, based on face-recognition software and ubiquitous live video feeds.Does this scenario sound like an unconstitutional invasion of privacy? These 24 eye-opening lectures immerse you in the Constitution, the courts, and the post-9/11 Internet era that the designers of our legal system could scarcely have imagined. Professor Rosen explains the most pressing legal issues of the modern day and asks how the framers of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights would have reacted to aspects of the modern life such as full-body scans, cell phone surveillance, and privacy in cloud servers.Called "the nation's most widely read and influential legal commentator" by the Los Angeles Times, Professor Rosen is renowned for his ability to bring legal issues alive - to put real faces and human drama behind the technical issues that cloud many legal discussions. Here he asks how you would decide particular cases about liberty and privacy. You'll come away with a more informed opinion about whether modern life gives even the most innocent among us reason to worry.

    His language and culture - those of Elizabethan England - are greatly different from our own, and his poetry, thick with metaphorical imagery and double meanings, can be hard to penetrate.Yet the keys to understanding Shakespeare are written into the plays themselves. If you can learn to recognize the playwright's own clues, you'll become able to engage meaningfully with his language, to follow the plot structures and themes that drive his plays, and to track the development of his characters.Over the course of 24 lectures, this innovative and penetrating exploration of Shakespeare's plays reveals how to enter Shakespeare's dramatic world, how to grasp what's happening in any of his plays, and how to enjoy them fully both on the page and the stage.Under Professor Conner's expert guidance, shaped by decades of studying and performing Shakespeare, you learn more than 40 interpretive tools, drawn from the texts themselves, that give you direct insight into the plays. These guiding principles allow you to follow the narratives of the plays as they unfold, with a clear understanding of how the plays function and fit together.The professor also reveals fascinating details of Shakespeare's era, which shed further light on the plays and the way his contemporary audiences perceived them.This course builds the skills that allow you to reach your own understanding of the plays - to deeply comprehend Shakespeare's transcendent poetic language, the spellbinding world of his great characters and stories, and his revelatory reflections on human experience.Disclaimer: Please note that this recording may include references to supplemental texts or print references that are not essential to the program and not supplied with your purchase.©2013 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2013 The Great Courses

    Just how did a small, rainy island in the North Atlantic achieve all this? And why did the empire on which the sun literally never set finally decline and fall? Niall Ferguson's acclaimed Empire brilliantly unfolds the imperial story in all its splendours and its miseries, showing how a gang of buccaneers and gold-diggers planted the seed of the biggest empire in all history - and set the world on the road to modernity.'The most brilliant British historian of his generation ... Ferguson examines the roles of "pirates, planters, missionaries, mandarins, bankers and bankrupts" in the creation of history's largest empire ... he writes with splendid panache ... and a seemingly effortless, debonair wit' Andrew Roberts'Dazzling ... wonderfully readable' New York Review of Books'A remarkably readable précis of the whole British imperial story - triumphs, deceits, decencies, kindnesses, cruelties and all' Jan Morris'Empire is a pleasure to read and brims with insights and intelligence' Sunday Times

    In Search of the Dark Ages vividly conjures up some of the most famous names in British history, such as Queen Boadicea, leader of a terrible war of resistance against the Romans, and King Arthur, the 'once and future king', for whose riddle Wood proposes a new and surprising solution. Here too, warts and all, are the Saxon, Viking and Norman kings who laid the political foundations of England - Offa of Mercia, Alfred the Great, Athelstan, and William the Conqueror, whose victory at Hastings in 1066 marked the end of Anglo-Saxon England.Reflecting recent historical, textual and archaeological research, this revised edition of Michael Wood's classic book overturns preconceptions of the Dark Ages as a shadowy and brutal era, showing them to be a richly exciting and formative period in the history of Britain.—'With In Search of the Dark Ages, Michael Wood wrote the book for history on TV.' The Times—'Michael Wood is the maker of some of the best TV documentaries ever made on history and archaeology.' Times Literary Supplement

    But have you ever wondered how a religion that doesn't even have a god could have accomplished this?Now you have the opportunity to have your questions answered, as this series of 24 lectures by an award-winning teacher traces the history, principles, and evolution of a theology that is both familiar and foreign.You'll learn the astonishing story of Siddhartha Gautama - who was to become the Buddha, or "enlightened one" - the Indian prince who abandoned wife, son, and a privileged life to seek the meaning of life and death, and whose "awakening" and subsequent teachings have since impacted the world as few others have.And you'll learn what happened after his death, as his followers began to share his teachings about the "Four Noble Truths" and the "Path" to Enlightenment. You'll see how Buddhist beliefs underwent significant and even radical change, with different varieties of Buddhism having to take shape as those beliefs spread across India, Central Asia, China, Japan, and virtually every corner of the Western world, such as becoming more respectful of one's duties to family and ancestors in China or becoming reconciled with local deities in Japan.