The Great Courses

Even after deciphering its hieroglyphs, and marveling at its scarabs, mummies, obelisks, and sphinxes, Egyptian civilization remains one of history's most mysterious....

Across six lectures, historian and consultant Alexander Marriotti traces the history of gladiators, from their earliest origins in Greek and Etruscan culture to their rise as celebrity athletes to their eventual decline as Rome’s imperial power faded.

While American history spans not much more than two centuries, it is filled with a wealth of leaders, wars, movements, inventions, and ideas....

Across six revealing lectures, Professor Jessica Hooten Wilson will introduce you to one of the 20th century’s most fascinating and divisive writers in Flannery O’Connor and the Scandal of Faith.

Most of us have a limited understanding of the powerful role economics has played in shaping human civilization. This makes economic history a vital lens through which to think....

These 36 lectures bring you the answers that the latest scientific and archaeological research and theorizing suggest about human origins....

Everything we now know about the universe - from the behavior of quarks to the birth of galaxies - has come from people who've been willing to ponder the unanswerable....

Albert Einstein was pursuing a dream far more ambitious than the theory of relativity. He was trying to find an equation that explained all physical reality - a theory of everything. Experimental physicist and award-winning educator Dr. Don Lincoln takes you on this exciting journey....

Was King Arthur a real person? What about Robin Hood? Is the Holy Grail a cup, or something else altogether? Did Europeans really burn millions of people at the stake for witchcraft? These are just a few of the questions you will explore with the help of medieval scholar Dorsey Armstrong....

With these 48 lectures, you’ll see the entire history of psychology unfold....

The early Christian claim that Jesus of Nazareth was God completely changed the course of Western civilization. What exactly happened, such that Jesus came to be considered God? Find out....

This series of lectures offers detailed analyses of the strategic and tactical dimensions of the Civil War's most important campaigns....

While the lectures cover an enormous range of key thinkers and ideas, they always focus on the most important ideas....

Know thy enemy. That's what the wisdom of history teaches us. And Adolf Hitler was surely the greatest enemy ever faced by modern civilization....

Each lecture will give you a refreshing new understanding of what made the British Empire both great in its achievements and vulnerable to its eventual downfall....

How the Earth Works takes you on an astonishing journey through time and space. In 48 lectures, you will look at what went into making our planet - from the big bang, to the formation of the solar system, to the subsequent evolution of Earth....

Learn how a single tongue spoken 150,000 years ago evolved into the estimated 6,000 languages used around the world today....

How do the histories of China and Japan, or Russia, India, and the remote territories of Sub-Saharan Africa fit in with commonly known accounts of Western traditions?....

Join Professor David Brakke, an award-winning Professor of History at The Ohio State University, for Understanding the New Testament. In these 24 eye-opening lectures, he takes you behind the scenes to study not only the text of the New Testament, but also the authors....

One of the most profound and satisfying of all poems, The Divine Comedy (or Commedia) of Dante Alighieri is a book for life....