Following World War I, Spain emerged at the forefront of a revolution in the European arts. Grasp the extraordinary innovations of the painters Picasso, Miró and Dalí, the architect Antoni Gaudí, and the contributions of musical masters Segovia and Casals. Also, delve into the political factors that led to the disintegration of Spain's constitutional monarchy.

A literary biography of a seminal figure of 20th century American literature, Margaret Walker, who established one of the first Black Studies centers in the nation, and mentored the Black Arts movement of the 1960s. For My People: The Life and Writing of Margaret Walker gives the long-overdue recognition to one of the seminal figures of American literature. Margaret Walker has been described by scholar Jerry Ward as "a national treasure" and by Nikki...

Presents an analysis of mysticism, heresy, and the witch craze in Europe between 1000 and 1700. This set of twenty-four lectures examines aspects of elite and popular culture in late medieval and early modern Western Europe, focusing on the way in which men and women seeking to explain, order, and escape the terrors of their lives embraced transcendental religious experiences, dreamed of and worked for the coming of the apocalypse, and seized on a...

In the period 1700-1900, kings and empires rose and fell, but science conquered all, taking the world by storm. Yet, as the 1700s began, the mysteries of the universe were pondered by "natural philosophers" whose explanations couldn't help but be influenced by religious thought, and political and social contexts shaping their world. The ideas of the Enlightenment were especially important and influential, and the work of these natural philosophers...

From the late stages of the Agricultural Revolution to the doorstep of the Scientific Revolution, this course covers western history from roughly 3000 B.C. to A.D. 1600, when the "foundations" of the modern West come into view. Beginning in the ancient Near East, moving to Greece and Rome, the course explores the shape and impact of large ancient empires, including those of Persia and Alexander the Great. It then considers Western Europe as it expands...

Dr. Seuss' infectious rhymes, his blue-tufted, strong-willed creatures, and his knack for pithy, roundabout plots have been entertaining children--and adults--for decades. And as biographer Donald Pease shows, the seemingly haphazard trajectory of Theodor Geisel's life bears a close resemblance to the zigzag plot lines of his children's books--by turns a cartoonist, ad agency artist (for Flit bug killer), author, caricaturist, documentary-film writer...

A series of 12 half-hour lectures on a college course level. Covers the rise of the Nazi party and the Third Reich in power.

Follow the lives of cops at an urban police station, from the traffic cops to the police chief himself, as they hit the streets of the city.

In the intersection of history and legend lies the story of William Wallace, who led his nation into battle against the English in the years around 1300. King Edward, popularly known as "Longshanks" has allowed the English barons who hold Scotland for him to claim the 'Prima Nocta.' Wallace and his love Murron marry secretly, but his guerrilla activities bring Murron to the attention of the English. They set a trap for Wallace, and the failure of...

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...