A Short History of the World takes readers from the Mayans to Mongolia, from the kingdom of Benin to the court of the Jagiellonian kings of Poland. Traditional histories of this kind have tended to be Eurocentric, telling mankind's story through tales of Greece and Rome and the crowned heads of Europe's oldest monarchies. Here, Marr widens the lens, concentrating as much, if not more on the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Instead of focusing on one episode of history taking place in one place, he draws surprising parallels and makes fascinating connections, focusing on a key incident or episode to tell a larger story: for instance, the liberation of the serfs in Russia, which took place at the same time as the American Civil War, which resulted in the abolition of slavery in the U.S.  But he begins the account with an episode in the life of Tolstoy, who racked up huge gambling debts and had to sell land and slaves as a result. Fresh and exciting, this is popular history at its very best.

    

    Now - with the technological advances of modern archaeology and a new perspective on world history - we are finally able to piece together their compelling true stories. In Ancient Civilizations of North America, Professor Edwin Barnhart, Director of the Maya Exploration Center, will open your eyes to a fascinating world you never knew existed - even though you've been living right next to it, or even on top of it, for as long as you've been on the continent.The peoples of ancient North America were exceptionally knowledgeable about their environment, but their intellectual and artistic curiosity went much beyond the immediate need for food and safety. Beginning thousands of years ago, and without benefit of written language, native peoples became mathematicians, construction and soil engineers, astronomers, urban planners, and more. They developed thriving cities, extensive trade routes, canals to bring water to the desert, and earthworks we still marvel over today.In 24 exciting lectures, you'll learn about the vibrant cities of Poverty Point, the first city in North America, built about 3,500 years ago, and Cahokia, the largest city of ancient North America. You'll explore the many ways in which the Chacoan environment provided cultural and religious focus for peoples of the southwest. And you'll learn about the Iroquoian source of some of our most basic "American" values.

    A few were swiftly caught, including the notorious SS leader, Heinrich Himmler. Others, however, evaded capture through a sophisticated Nazi organization designed to hide them. Among those war criminals were Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death" who performed hideous medical experiments at Auschwitz; Martin Bormann, Hitler's brutal personal secretary; Klaus Barbie, the cruel "Butcher of Lyon"; and perhaps the most awful Nazi of all: Adolf Eichmann.Killing the SS is the epic saga of the espionage and daring waged by self-styled "Nazi hunters." This determined and disparate group included a French husband and wife team, an American lawyer who served in the army on D-Day, a German prosecutor who had signed an oath to the Nazi Party, Israeli Mossad agents, and a death camp survivor. Over decades, these men and women scoured the world, tracking down the SS fugitives and bringing them to justice, which often meant death.Written in the fast-paced style of the Killing series, Killing the SS will educate and stun the reader.The final chapter is truly shocking.

    Lawrence, “a sideshow of a sideshow.”  Amidst the slaughter in European trenches, the Western combatants paid scant attention to the Middle Eastern theater.  As a result, the conflict was shaped to a remarkable degree by a small handful of adventurers and low-level officers far removed from the corridors of power.   Curt Prüfer was an effete academic attached to the German embassy in Cairo, whose clandestine role was to foment Islamic jihad against British rule.  Aaron Aaronsohn was a renowned agronomist and committed Zionist who gained the trust of the Ottoman governor of Syria. William Yale was the fallen scion of the American aristocracy, who traveled the Ottoman Empire on behalf of Standard Oil, dissembling to the Turks in order gain valuable oil concessions.  At the center of it all was Lawrence.  In early 1914 he was an archaeologist excavating ruins in the sands of Syria; by 1917 he was the most romantic figure of World War One, battling both the enemy and his own government to bring about the vision he had for the Arab people. The intertwined paths of these four men – the schemes they put in place, the battles they fought, the betrayals they endured and committed – mirror the grandeur, intrigue and tragedy of the war in the desert.  Prüfer became Germany’s grand spymaster in the Middle East.  Aaronsohn constructed an elaborate Jewish spy-ring in Palestine, only to have the anti-Semitic and bureaucratically-inept British first ignore and then misuse his organization, at tragic personal cost.  Yale would become the only American intelligence agent in the entire Middle East – while still secretly on the payroll of Standard Oil.  And the enigmatic Lawrence rode into legend at the head of an Arab army, even as he waged secret war against his own nation’s imperial ambitions. Based on years of intensive primary document research, LAWRENCE IN ARABIA definitively overturns received wisdom on how the modern Middle East was formed.  Sweeping in its action, keen in its portraiture, acid in its condemnation of the destruction wrought by European colonial plots, this is a book that brilliantly captures the way in which the folly of the past creates the anguish of the present.

    Geniuses—Monteverdi, Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, and Puccini—produced some of the landmark artistic achievements of all time in this form. With Professor Robert Greenberg to show you how, you can learn to understand, appreciate—even to love—opera in just 24 hours of lectures that are a pleasure to hear.With the knowledge of opera from this course, you will understand how music has the power to reveal truths beyond the spoken word; how opera is a unique marriage of words and music in which the whole is far greater than its parts. You will learn the reasons for opera's enduring popularity. And you will be able to explore in great depth the extraordinary and compelling world of opera.Professor Greenberg is to the lecture what Mozart was to opera. Brilliant, irreverent toward his subject and yet awed by it, he is ingenious in his approach to ensure that his work will have its intended effect on the listener.The music is transcendently beautiful. In this course, you will listen to some of the most extraordinary artistic works of all time.The history of opera is traced from its beginning in the early 17th century to around 1924. The lectures examine landmark operas; musical, cultural, and social developments that influenced opera's growth; and the influence of national languages and cultures on opera.Part I: The Full Flower and Its OriginsThe first eight lectures are foundational. You examine the origins of opera and the adaptations of other musical forms that allowed opera to achieve its full effects, first accomplished in Monteverdi's Orfeo of 1607.But Professor Greenberg does not hide the result while waiting on history to get us there. The course opens with one of the most powerful moments in opera—the dramatically loaded aria "Nessun dorma" ("No one shall sleep") from Giacomo Puccini's Turandot.In Turandot, you are exposed to opera's unique incorporation of soliloquy, dialogue, scenery, action, and continuous music into an incredibly expressive and exciting whole.This famous aria shows us the power of the composer—the power of creating music that goes beyond the words of the libretto to express thoughts and feelings that cannot be expressed in words.The study continues with a discussion of how music reveals character and the unconscious state. You are introduced to operatic archetypes such as Figaro and Carmen.You examine how the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman culture contributed to the riches of the Renaissance. You see the evolution of the madrigal, a form that was ultimately rejected in favor of a more expressive vocal medium: early opera.Part I of the course concludes with an analysis of the first successful attempt to combine words and music into musical drama, Monteverdi's Orfeo of 1607.Part II: The Aria, the Golden Age, Opera Seria, Opera BuffaRecitative, the essence of Monteverdi's style, made music subservient to words, but because of its forward-driving nature, recitative cannot express personal reflection.You learn how the invention of the aria gave opera composers a powerful tool to stop the dramatic action for characters' moments of self-reflection.Gluck's reforms and his Orfeo ed Euridice of 1762 are addressed as the starting point for the modern opera repertory. The explosion of operas in the Golden Age–Dark Age of opera is discussed. You learn how different voice types are assigned different roles, and how this has varied by culture.The rise of opera seria and its characteristics are discussed, along with an analysis of the second act of Mozart's Idomeneo—opera seria transcendent.You examine the development of opera buffa, from its origins in the popular folklore of the Commedia dell'Arte to its eventual replacement of opera seria. Mozart's brilliant The Marriage of Figaro is discussed as one of the greatest contributions to the opera buffa genre.Part III: Rossini and Verdi: The Development of French OperaYou see how the Italian language and culture gave rise to the bel canto style, with its comic plots, one-dimensional characters, appealing melodies, and florid melodic embellishments.Dr. Greenberg reveals how highly pressurized the business of opera was in the 18th century. Rossini once remarked, "In my time, all the impresarios of Italy were bald by 30." You are introduced to Rossini's The Barber of Seville of 1816 as the quintessential bel canto opera.You learn how Giuseppi Verdi broke the bel canto mold. He dominated Italian opera for over half a century by virtue of his lyricism, his emphasis on human emotions and psychological insight, and his use of the orchestra and parlante to drive the dramatic action and maintain musical continuity.Verdi's Otello is discussed as one of the greatest operas of all time.You next study French opera and why it became a distinctly different genre from Italian opera. Nineteenth-century French opera—grand opera, opéra comique, and lyric opera—are three distinctive French genres. You'll hear why in Act 2 of Bizet's dramatically powerful Carmen .Part IV: Wagner, Strauss, PucciniYou see how German singspiel, a play with music, grew from humble origins as a low-class entertainment to high art with Mozart's The Rescue from the Harem (1782) and The Magic Flute (1791). You learn how Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz established 19th-century German opera.You then study Richard Wagner: his personal beliefs, musical theories, and operatic innovations. Wagner turned to the ancient Greek ideal for inspiration, and from it he conceived the idea of an all-encompassing artwork, or music drama, in which the orchestra plays the role of a purveyor of unspoken truths. Dr. Greenberg cites Wagner's Tristan und Isolde as the most influential composition of the 19th century, next to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.Richard Strauss and his controversial opera Salome exemplifies late Romantic German opera.You examine Russian opera and nationalism. The late development of Russian opera is outlined from Mikhail Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila to Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. You see how the Russian language shaped the vocal style of Russian opera.The course concludes with an overview of opera verismo, a 19th- and 20th-century genre that favors depictions of the darker side of the human condition; a transcendent example of it is in the pivotal second act of Giacomo Puccini's Tosca.The essence of opera is debated as you hear part of a scene from Richard Strauss's Capriccio. Is it words, or is it music? It is an indefinable combination of both, with the whole greater than the parts.

    But at what cost? Now, as China closes the book on the policy after over three decades, it faces a population grown too old and too male, with a vastly diminished supply of young workers. Mei Fong has spent years documenting the policy's repercussions on every sector of Chinese society. In One Child, she explores its true human impact, traveling across China to meet the people who live with its consequences. Their stories reveal a dystopian reality: unauthorized second children ignored by the state, only children supporting aging parents and grandparents on their own, villages teeming with ineligible bachelors. Fong tackles questions that have major implications for China's future: whether its Little Emperor cohort will make for an entitled or risk-averse generation; how China will manage to support itself when one in every four people is over sixty-five years old; and above all, how much the one-child policy may end up hindering China's growth. Weaving in Fong's reflections on striving to become a mother herself, One Child offers a nuanced and candid report from the extremes of family planning.

    Robinson, Ph.D., Oxford UniversityThe Great CoursesPhilosophy & Intellectual HistoryThe Teaching CompanyLecture Series60 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture Taught by Daniel N. Robinson Philosophy Faculty, Oxford University; Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, Georgetown University Ph.D., City University of New York Humanity left childhood and entered the troubled but productive world when it started to criticize its own certainties and weigh the worthiness of its most secure beliefs. Thus began that "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, the terms of civic and political life-the good, the better, the best. The debate continues, and one remains aloof to it at a very heavy price, for "the unexamined life is not worth living." This course of 60 lectures gives the student a sure guide and interpreter as the major themes within the Long Debate are presented and considered. The persistent themes are understood as problems: * The problem of knowledge, arising from concerns as to how or whether we come to know anything, and are justified in our belief that this knowledge is valid and sound * The problem of conduct, arising from the recognition that our actions, too, require some sort of justification in light of our moral and ethical sensibilities-or lack of them * The problem of governance, which includes an understanding of sources of law and its binding nature. The great speculators of history have exhausted themselves on these problems and have bequeathed to us a storehouse of insights, some so utterly persuasive as to have shaped thought itself. In these coherent and beautifully articulated lectures you will hear Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics and Epicureans, the Scholastic philosophers and the leaders of Renaissance thought. In addition, you will learn about the architects of the Age of Newton and the Enlightenment that followed in its wake-all this, as well as Romanticism and Continental thought, Nietzsche and Darwin, Freud and William James. This course is a veritable banquet of enriching reflection on mental life and the acts of humanity that proceed from it: the plans and purposes, the values and beliefs, the possibilities and vulnerabilities.

    Misogyny encompasses the Church, witch hunts, sexual theory, Nazism, pro-life campaigners, and finally, today's developing world, where women are increasingly and disproportionately at risk because of radicalized religious beliefs, famine, war, and disease. Extensively researched, highly readable and provocative, this book chronicles an ancient, pervasive and enduring injustice. The questions it poses deal with the fundamentals of human existence — sex, love, violence — that have shaped the lives of humans throughout history, and ultimately limn an abuse of human rights on a nearly unthinkable scale.

    They were alternately known as “waste people,” “offals,” “rubbish,” “lazy lubbers,” and “crackers.” By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called “clay eaters” and “sandhillers,” known for prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds.Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America’s supposedly class-free society––where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery.Reconstruction pitted "poor white trash" against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics–-a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ’s Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, "white trash" have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity.We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nation’s history. With Isenberg’s landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well.

    You also study what it was like to live in the late antique world: How did people earn their livings?What was the role of women in society? What distinguished the great cities of the era?Nothing in Rome's previous experience compared with the ferment of late antiquity, which saw the unpredictable growth of new institutions, states, religions, and arts. After taking this course you will never think of the barbarians and the "fall" of Rome in quite the same way again. Your imagination will be alive with the incidents, innovations, and peoples of an exciting era that gave birth to us all: late antiquity.

    Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today’s developing countries—with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.Francis Fukuyama, author of the bestselling The End of History and the Last Man and one of our most important political thinkers, provides a sweeping account of how today’s basic political institutions developed. The first of a major two-volume work, The Origins of Political Order begins with politics among our primate ancestors and follows the story through the emergence of tribal societies, the growth of the first modern state in China, the beginning of the rule of law in India and the Middle East, and the development of political accountability in Europe up until the eve of the French Revolution.Drawing on a vast body of knowledge—history, evolutionary biology, archaeology, and economics—Fukuyama has produced a brilliant, provocative work that offers fresh insights on the origins of democratic societies and raises essential questions about the nature of politics and its discontents.

    (Great Courses, #8514)

    Late Middle Ages-Rebirth, Waning, Calamity? 2. Philip the Fair versus Boniface VIII 3. Fall of the Templars and the Avignon Papacy 4. The Great Papal Schism 5. The Hundred Years War, Part 1 6. The Hundred Years War, Part 2 7. The Black Death, Part 1 8. The Black Death, Part 2 9. Revolt in Town and Country 10. William Ockham 11. John Wycliffe and the Lollards 12. Jan Hus and the Hussite Rebellion 13. Witchcraft 14. Christine de Pizan and Catherine of Siena 15. Gunpowder 16. The Printing Press 17. Renaissance Humanism, Part 1 18. Renaissance Humanism, Part 2 19. The Fall of the Byzantine Empire 20. Ferdinand and Isabella 21. The Spanish Inquisition 22. The Age of Exploration 23. Columbus and the Columbian Exchange 24. When Did the Middle Ages End? Late Middle Ages (24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)Course No. 8296 Taught by Philip DaileaderThe College of William and MaryPh.D., Harvard University

    The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.