Showing results by author "The Great Courses" in All Categories

George Orwell was more than just a writer. He was a political and social sage who valued, above all else, individual freedom. His works aren’t just entertainment - they’re cautionary tales and red flags of warning. And if we ever hope to understand threats to freedom and how to stop them, we must learn from them. In these 24 lectures, learn how the man born as Eric Blair forged himself into a writer of international importance and renown.

Over the course of 24 lessons, including the eight meditation checkups within lessons, you will learn both what Zen has traditionally meant for East Asians and what it can mean for contemporary Westerners. Prepare to be challenged as Professor Davis asks you to set aside your preconceptions in order to open yourselves to what Zen masters who lived in the past and in distant lands have to teach you.

In 10 riveting episodes, paleoanthropologist Elen Feuerriegel takes you on an unrivaled tour of the human fossil record in search of the biological and behavioral underpinnings of our very “humanness”.

What is power and who is allowed to wield it? Why is female power so rare and, often, so feared? What can the women who gained power in the ancient world teach us about the contemporary world and our modern ideas of gender, authority, and equality? Listeners will explore these and other questions as you travel back to the ancient world and uncover the stories of remarkable women who overcame a host of barriers to wield power in a male-dominated world.

Building a Better Vocabulary offers an intriguing look at the nuts and bolts of English, teaches you the etymology and morphology - or the history and structure - of words, and delves into the cognitive science behind committing new words to long-term memory. By the end of the 36 enjoyable lectures, you will have a practical framework for continuing to build your vocabulary by discovering new words and fully mastering the nuances of familiar ones.

What is it about Stoicism that Marcus found so important then, and that millions find relevant today? In the 12 fascinating lectures of Books That Matter: Meditations, professor Massimo Pigliucci explores the questions Marcus believed were crucial to address in a life of value, the answers he proposed, and the many ways in which you can use Stoic philosophy. While Meditations was originally written for an audience of just one, what Marcus wanted to examine certainly still applies to us today. What exactly should we be mindful of in this life?

In the nine lectures of Slow Down: How Doing Nothing Makes Us Better Humans, Constance Kassor, of Lawrence University in Wisconsin, shows you how to do what so many of us desperately need: Take a step back, reassess your priorities, and take some time for yourself. Each lecture focuses on an area in which you can learn how to form better habits, striking a balance between what needs to be done and what you need to thrive. These areas include getting better sleep, cultivating relationships, engaging in creative tasks, incorporating mindfulness into your everyday routine, and much more.

Grab a flashlight and go monster-hunting in the safe company of Adam Jortner, award-winning professor of religion at Auburn University. You’ll encounter chilling tales of living houses, sentient plants, psychotic toys, brain-eating zombies, and otherworldly beings whose mere name is enough to drive people insane. Along the way, you’ll learn how monster stories change how Americans think and what Americans do, how they shape the history of our country, and what secrets about human nature these inhuman monsters can share.

Military history often highlights successes and suggests a sense of inevitability about victory, but there is so much that can be gleaned from considering failures. Study these crucibles of history to gain a better understanding of why a civilization took - or didn't take - a particular path.

Meet Agatha Christie, the best-selling novelist in human history. Her writing career spanned six decades, during which time she wrote 66 crime novels, 6 non-crime novels (including romances), and over 150 short stories. Not only was she a phenomenally successful novelist, but she is also the most successful female playwright of all time - her play “The Mousetrap” is the longest-running show in history. As you learn about Christie’s experiences and her storied career, you will better understand how the circumstances of her life shaped her work and vice versa.

The Art of War, also known as the Sūnzǐ, is a classic Chinese text on competitive strategy. It has influenced modern military and political strategists, East and West, and is considered a major landmark in the history of strategic thought. In these 12 lectures, Professor Wilson leads you in plumbing the depths of the text, understanding its historical context and profile, while grasping its application to contemporary politics, business, sports, and more.

Throughout the 24 lectures of Banned Books, Burned Books: Forbidden Literary Works, author and book critic Professor Maureen Corrigan of Georgetown University will take you on a tour of some of the most challenged and controversial works of literature, from the plays of Shakespeare to 21st-century best-sellers—even including the dictionary and classic fairy tales. You will trace the history, in the United States and Great Britain, of the challenges to books, the censoring of books, book bans, and even burnings.

James Krasner, an expert in Victorian literature, takes you on a fascinating journey into the enduring power of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. You’ll learn how these three literary masters structured their novels to offer not only scares but also complex insights into cultural debates that still matter to us today.

Discover the story of the world's most consistently best-selling book, which came into being through a remarkable and complicated process. In 24 stimulating lectures, Professor Johnson investigates the many forms the Bible has taken and the ways history, scholarship, and technology have helped shape this great tradition, as well as the Bible's powerful influence on human history and culture.

The issues addressed by macroeconomics are all around you, all the time—from taxes to inflation to mention of the GDP on the nightly news. By learning the principles of macroeconomics, you’ll be able to go beyond simply hearing the terms to better understanding their relationships to each other and how they create the economic environment in which you live. In fact, macroeconomics with its “big-picture glasses” allows you to better ask—and better try to answer—the biggest questions of our time, questions that impact the lives of billions of people.

Hardly a day goes by that we don’t hear about someone committing a violent, reprehensible, even evil, act. And each time it happens, before we know anything about the circumstances, we are already sure of one thing: We are nothing like that perpetrator. But how can we be so sure? After all, we are all human. In Understanding the Dark Side of Human Nature, Professor Daniel Breyer takes us on a fascinating philosophical journey into many of the deepest and darkest questions that have engaged humanity for millennia.

Memory is, without a doubt, the most powerful (and practical) tool of everyday life. By linking both your past and your future, memory gives you the power to plan, to reason, to perceive, and to understand. Yet while all of us have an amazing capacity for memory, there are plenty of times when it seems to fail us. Why does this happen? And how can you fix it? In Scientific Secrets for a Powerful Memory, you’ll explore the real research on how memory functions - and then apply these findings to help you make better use of the memory abilities you have.

In The Great Tours: Greece and Turkey, from Athens to Istanbul, award-winning Professor John R. Hale of the University of Louisville is your guide to the fabulous civilizations of the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Ottomans, and to the natural wonders and idyllic landscapes that surround them. These 24 richly enjoyable lectures give you the chance to experience these important sites and cultures through the eyes of an expert archaeologist and scholar, whose knowledge and depth of insight go far beyond any ordinary travel narrative.

Join Professor Horton for an accessible introduction from contract essentials, including offers, acceptances, counteroffers, and options and defenses, to contract enforcement, such as fraud, duress, and unconscionability. In lectures that demystify concepts and terms that can often seem intimidating to individuals outside of legal fields, you’ll better understand (and navigate) the contracts of everyday life.

If you're like many people, you might associate debate with a school club, or perhaps a TV political debate that features two or more candidates talking over each other. But if these are your only associations with debating, you're missing out on an intellectual pursuit that can help you in all aspects of your daily life. The ability to debate - to present persuasive arguments, pierce the logic of others, and turn the tables against withering cross-examinations - is one of the truest tests of one's intellectual capacity.