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An esteemed professor of biology at Wheaton College, John Kricher leads a fascinating discussion of the approximately 10,000 species of birds that share our world. In these engaging lectures, Kricher expands on such topics as bird anatomy, the mechanics of flight, migration, reproduction, and song. The professor's lively presentation demonstrates how understanding the traits, life cycle, and evolution of birds is critical for an understanding of the...
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C. S. Lewis produced a body of work as diverse as it is beloved. He is known the world over for his cherished Chronicles of Narnia, but he is also the author of novels for adults, scholarly work, and the writings that rival his Narnia series in terms of continued popularity: his eloquent defences of Christianity. A friend to J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis spent much of his life at Oxford surrounded by academics who often held him in contempt for his Christian...
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Even millennia after its fall, the grand expanse of Roman achievement continues to affect not only American society, but the entire world as well. What caused a civilization of such accomplishments to disintegrate? In this informative and lively series of lectures, renowned history professor Thomas F. Madden serves as the ultimate guide through the fall of ancient Rome. Professor Madden correlates the principles of Roman conduct-both governmental...
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In everything that follows, "Bible" always means the Hebrew or Jewish Bible. The Christian Scriptures will always be called "New Testament" or "Gospels." Judaism, Christianity and Islam should be thought of as three faith communities rather than as three "religions." They are communities of believers, each with its own ideology, history (its ideology is often embedded in its history), its traditions, and, of course, its members, the great number of...
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From the very outset in the West-from the time of Homer himself in about 750 BCE-the epic has been the most highly regarded of literary genres. It is rivaled only by tragedy, which arose a bit more than two centuries later, as the most respected, the most influential, and, from a slightly different vantage point, the most prestigious mode of addressing the human condition in literary terms. The major epics are the works that, from the very outset,...
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Renowned ornithologist John Kricher presents an absorbing analysis of the diverse ecosystems that exist on Planet Earth. He provides a factual study of the many fragile and threatened portions of our biosphere while giving a thorough description of the interaction between each system and the effect of man's presence in them. Professor Kricher explains the amazing variety of flora and fauna that inhabit the individual ecosystems and synthesizes current...
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For over 400 years, crusaders ("those signed by the cross"), out of Christian zeal, a declared love for their fellow man, and, in many cases, a simple desire for fortune, glory, and heavenly reward, marched to the Holy Land to battle both a real and perceived threat to their way of life and their religious beliefs. The story of the many crusades are filled with an unremitting passion to keep or return the home of Christianity to Christians. It is...
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It is during the Middle Ages that modern Europe, indeed, modern Western culture as we know it, comes to be. Classical Mediterranean culture drew from the ancient Middle East, and more directly, from the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. The Middle Ages add the Northlands, Celts, and Germans, and ultimately, Slavs as well, to the mix. And the Middle Ages saw the birth of the immediate predecessors of our own ideas about love and marriage as important concerns...
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Islam and Christianity share both remarkable similarities and remarkable differences. In the grand scheme, both are relatively recent religions, with Christianity taking hold in Northern Europe at about the same time that Islam took hold in the Persian world (although Christianity appeared on the scene six centuries before Islam). Through the years, Islam and Christianity and the civilizations they created have influenced each other to greater and...
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Dinosaurs-the word means "fearfully great reptile"-have been a source of fascination ever since their discovery in England early in the nineteenth century. Aside from birds, all dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years, yet, before then, they dominated Earth's terrestrial habitats for about 160 million years, far longer than primates, or humans, have been around. Dinosaurs present the ultimate puzzle in forensic science, but we have learned...
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In this series of lectures, Professor Ken Masugi of Johns Hopkins University examines the importance of rhetoric in American politics. Political speeches have, since the nation's inception, defined and shaped American politics. Professor Masugi demonstrates how the greatest American political speeches take their bearings from the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers. As the lectures proceed, Professor Masugi investigates the rhetoric...
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From mysterious origins, through the Victorian sleuths and the "Golden Age" of the genre (the 1920s through the 1940s), and to the present day, detective fiction, mysteries, and spy thrillers have consistently topped best-seller lists around the world. Professor M. Lee Alexander provides listeners with a lively discussion of groundbreaking authors from Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle to Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, and modern writers such...
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We all need some help in understanding the world, and that is the starting point for political theory itself. The great works of other times and places can speak to us today, wherever we are. Political theory does this better than other subjects, in part because the theorist wants us to look around and think about the specifics of the world around us, but also to lift our heads and see farther than we normally do. The theorists we will study in this...
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Esteemed university professor and best-selling author Thomas F. Madden presents an intriguing series of lectures based on a fascinating premise: that the United States has more in common with the rising Roman Republic than with the declining Roman Empire. The Tiber and the Potomac explores the amazing parallels between history's two most unusual superpowers. Both nations built empires based on trust, skillfully making friends of enemies. During the...
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Esteemed professor Donald M.G. Sutherland provides a riveting account of the French Revolution, explaining how its effects varied greatly according to regional economies, social structures, and religious affiliations. He examines how massive counterrevolutionary movements profoundly affected the course of the Revolution, leading to the failure of constitutional government and, ultimately, to an elitist dictatorship in the person of Napoleon Bonaparte...
16) The Modern Novel
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A recipient of the Whiting Foundation Teaching Fellowship, Katherine Elkins is also the co-director of the Integrated Program in the Humane Studies at Kenyon College. In this lecture series, Elkins examines the development of the modern novel by investigating four great modernist authors: James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf. The lectures explore the authors' most respected works and illustrate how each author's unique style...
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The legal system in America is the basis of freedom as we know it today. The system is based, ultimately, on the common law of England, but it has grown, developed, and changed over the years. American law has been a critical factor in American life since colonial times. It has played a role in shaping society, but society, the structure, culture, economy, and politics of the country, has decisively shaped the law. Throughout history, the legal system...
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In A Way with Words: Writing, Rhetoric, and the Art of Persuasion, widely published professor Michael D.C. Drout embarked on a thought-provoking investigation into the role of rhetoric in our world. Now, in A Way with Words II: Approaches to Literature, the renowned literary scholar leads a series of lectures that focus on the big questions of literature. Is literature a kind of lie? Can fiction ever be "realistic"? Why do we read? What should we...
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An enthusiastic admirer of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, professor and philosopher Peter Kreeft details the rational thought and precise literary talent that established Aquinas as the foremost thinker of his time-and as the most important philosopher for the almost two thousand years between Aristotle and Descartes. A landmark of philosophical achievement, Aquinas's Summa Theological has given theologians and philosophers much to discuss since...
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Take a journey through fascinating outer worlds that lay beyond the earth's sphere.
We begin with a unifying overview of the Universe that provides a broad context into which we place the objects of our planetary system. The course then divides into four overlapping portions, exploring the Earth and the layout of the sky, examining the physical laws that control what we see, learning the natures of the celestial bodies, and examining the planets...
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