The Supreme Court of the United States represents our most unusual and least understood branch of government. Unlike the other branches, the high court marches to an overtly legal drummer, one that demands there be cases and controversies, there be lawyers who function as adversaries, and that all arguments be made in open court. On the other hand, its justices, unlike the president and the members of Congress, are appointed. They enjoy independence...

"These lectures address the various aspects and implications of "conversational style." They look at the dynamics of specific situations, such as the workplace and classroom, where the role of conversational style is of particular importance"--Container.

One of the most dramatic periods in world history is the age of Europe's discovery of the world from Columbus and da Gama in the late fifteenth century to the voyages of James Cook in the eighteenth century. The extent of the changes can be seen by comparing the pre-Columbian maps, which showed no knowledge of either the Americas or the Pacific, with those of 1800, which in terms of projection, scale, and content approximate today's maps. In this...

Through the ages, mankind has pursued questions of faith in something beyond the world of ordinary experience. Is there a God? How can we explain the presence of evil? Do humans, or human souls, live on after death? Is there a hell? The following lectures examine these eternal questions and present the most compelling arguments for and against God's existence, the seeming conflicts between religion and science, and the different truth-claims of the...

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...

In Empire of Gold: A History of the Byzantine Empire, esteemed university professor Thomas F. Madden offers a fascinating series of lectures on the history of the remarkable culture and state that developed out of the ancient Roman Empire, particularly its eastern portion, throughout the Middle Ages. The story here therefore begins at an ending, that of the Roman Empire, in the third century AD, and continues over the next one thousand years. This...

Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett: These four masters of Irish literature created works of startling innovation and unparalleled literary merit. They defied popular expectations and confounded critics with unique masterpieces that one might think of as puzzles, the solution of which lies at the heart of the modern age. Understanding the works of these greats, all associated to some degree with the Irish Literary Revival, is...

In this compelling series of lectures, widely esteemed author and professor Thomas F. Madden illustrates how the papacy, the world's oldest institution, gave birth to the West. Since Jesus Christ instructed the foremost of his Apostles, Peter, that he would be the rock upon which Christ would build his church, the papacy has survived the rise and fall of empires while continuing to assert an undeniable influence on world events. The men who have served...

Esteemed history professor Thomas F. Madden explores the reformations that swept across Christendom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The impact of these reforms affected government, popes, and kings as well as commoners, for at this time the Church was an omnipresent part of European identity-and the import of Church reforms on every level of life at this time simply cannot be underestimated. Involved in this fascinating era are such notable...

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...