European History and European Lives: 1715 to 1914

Thirty-five of the most influential people who lived during the 200 most difficult years in the history of the West form the subject of this dramatically different course. Who were these artists, writers, scientists, and leaders in the context of history? How and why did their lives shape our times and reflect their own?

They lived during the years 1715 to 1914, and they include:

Augustus the Strong—his gargantuan appetites nearly exhausted his royal treasury
Charles Darwin—a disinterested theology student whose real obsession was to explain things
Sir Robert Walpole—an extraordinary politician with an even greater mastery of corruption
David Lloyd George—his incomparable political strengths were put to a radically different purpose
Mary Wollstonecraft—her groundbreaking manifestos launched feminism but offered little protection from the irony of her own biological destiny
Captain Alfred Dreyfus—he was condemned to Devil's Island in a notorious miscarriage of justice that foreshadowed the Holocaust
Napoleon Bonaparte—his conquests and administrative genius turned the French Revolution from chaos and disorder to stability and permanence.

What do these people have in common? And what links them to such similarly disparate figures as Marx and Engels, Marie Antoinette, Edmund Burke, C.P.E. Bach, Metternich, Pope Pius IX, Nathan Rothschild, or Louis Pasteur?

They are all major players in the grand drama of history, whether ruler or statesman, artist or philosopher, general, scientist, or leader of a faith. And each plays a role in this course—a deft mix of history and biography—as a way to understand this history.

A Dramatic Classroom Approach

Professor Jonathan Steinberg makes clear at the outset that this approach is different from anything he has seen in almost 40 years in the classroom.

This course:

Focuses on 35 people whose lives represent the crucial forces that shaped European history during two decisive centuries
Examines the transformation of Europe from a world of "lord and serf, horse and carriage, superstition and disease" into today's modern state of "boss and worker, steam and steel, science and medicine."

A March through Living European History

In this innovative course you hear Professor Steinberg's extensive use of carefully chosen quotes from the people themselves and from several biographical sources. This attention to detail also includes musical excerpts when he discusses composers Bach and Wagner.

As you grow to understand the living context of European history, you appreciate the great transforming themes embodied by the people who populate this fascinating march.

The two most important themes are the movement toward democracy—culminating in the French Revolution—that dominated the first of the two centuries covered, and the Industrial Revolution with the explosion of science and technology that dominated the second.

High School Level - Early Amer...icans through the Forty-Niners

Historical Jesus

History of Ancient Egypt

History of Christianity in the Reformation Era

History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts

History of Hitlers Empire, 2nd Edition

History of Russia: From Peter the Great to Gorbachev

History of Science - Antiquity to 1700

History of Science: 1700-1900

History of the Bible

History of the English Language, 2nd Edition

History of the Supreme Court

History of the United States, 2nd Edition

History of World Literature

How Music and Mathematics Relate

How to Become a SuperStar Student, 2nd Edition

How to Grow Anything: Container Gardening Tips & Techniques

How We Learn

Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations

War, Peace, and Power: Diplomatic History of Europe, 1500-2000

History of the Ancient World: A Global Perspective

The Mysterious Etruscans

Turning Points in Middle Eastern History