Introduction to Poetry Audio

Our greatest public orator, Abraham Lincoln’s speeches still stir the heart of any American who encounters them.

From 1861 to 1865, slavery ended and a loose-knit republic became a unified, continent-spanning power. The price in human lives was greater than that for all other American wars combined.

The United States is often thought of as a "young" nation. But in fact, it is the oldest continuing democracy in the world.

What defines an American? Is it the love of liberty, the pursuit of justice, the urge to invent, the desire for wealth, the drive to explore, the quest for spiritual values?

Americans pride themselves on being doers rather than thinkers.

This course explores the particularly rich history of religion in the U.S.

The revolution that created the U.S. was only one of many "American revolutions." From 1776 to 1825, wars for independence erupted throughout the Americas—from Boston to Buenos Aires—creating 19 new nations.

Between 1492 and 1700 the Spanish, Portuguese, English, and French carved out major colonial empires in the New World from Canada to Argentina.

This is a very unusual course in American History from pre-colonial times until the Gold Rush of 1849.

Impressionism changed the way that people see the world. These artists documented life in the latter half of the 19th century and provided models of behavior, decorum, and urban beauty that persist to this day.

In this course you experience supreme artworks created in Florence, Rome, Venice, and other Italian cities by such masters as Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian...

The development of the arts in Europe from the Middle Ages to the modern era is an astonishing record of cultural achievement, from the breathtaking architecture of Gothic cathedrals to the daring visual experiments of the Cubist painters.

This course takes a historical look at the people who bring cases before the Supreme Court and the justices who decide what the Constitution means in each dispute.

This fast-paced course summarizing vital economic lessons learned in the last century provides invaluable guidance for understanding the current economy.

This 84-lecture series features three top professors sharing insights into this nation’s past, from European settlement and Revolutionary War through Civil War, 19th-century industrialization, world wars, and today.

Lincoln was the central figure in the nation's greatest crisis, the Civil War. His achievements in office make as good a case as any that he was the greatest president in U.S. history.

In a war that produced no other successful Confederate armies, how was Robert E. Lee able to create and inspire an army whose achievements resonated not only across the Confederacy...

How is it possible that perhaps the greatest book about U.S. democracy that has ever been written was penned by a Frenchman visiting this country some 175 years ago? Why is it still relevant in today’s ever-changing political landscape?

This course is a narrative history of U.S. political involvement in the Middle East from World War I to the present day.