Regardless of their level of education, most people wish they understood economics better. An award-winning professor translates the subject's complicated principles into easy-to-understand language, tackling all the key questions and hot topics of microeconomics and macroeconomics.

University of Michigan professor Eric S. Rabkin discusses the fantastic in its most important modern variety, science fiction, as part of the entire course on fantasy literature.

Covers the history of the Crusades, from its origins to the final Muslim victory over the Crusaders in 1291.

As explorers and traders, the Vikings played a decisive role in the formation of Latin Christendom, and particularly of Western Europe. In this course the Vikings will be studied not only as warriors, but also in other roles for which they are equally extraordinary: merchants, artists, kings, raiders, seafarers, shipbuilders, and creators of a remarkable literature of myths and sagas.

Few nations have as long and intricate a history as China. Despite a world grown increasingly smaller, China is still seen as a faraway, exotic land, shrouded in secrets, veiled with the mysteries of ages past. For most of its 5,000-year existence, China has been the largest, most populous, wealthiest, and mightiest nation on Earth - facts left unexplored in the history courses most of us in the West have taken. It is essential that Westerners...

Presents a history of Christianity from the time of Jesus to the end of the fourth century. Includes examination of Jewish-Christian relationships, Christian relationships with the Roman Empire, persecution of Christians, and the development of church offices and theology.

University of Tennessee professor Vejas Liulevicius delivers lectures for a course on the First World War, which was touched off by a terrorist act in Bosnia and quickly expanded far beyond the expectations of those involved. It became the first "total war", a conflict involving entire societies mobilized to wage unrestrained war, devoting all their wealth, industries, institutions, and the lives of their citizens to victory at any price. The cost...

Recent scholarship examining the Persian Empire from the Persian perspective has discovered a major force that has had a lasting influence on the world in terms of administration, economics, religion, architecture, and more. In fact, the Persian Empire was arguably the worlds first global powera diverse, multicultural empire with flourishing businesses and people on the move. It was an empire of information, made possible by a highly...