Explore the compelling and complex legacy of the man Forbes Magazine named “The Businessman of the 20th Century.
Your guide for this audio course is celebrated history professor Jeff Webb, voted Teacher of the Year at Huntington University. Each captivating lecture guides you through a different facet of Henry Ford’s life and accomplishments.
Few industrial leaders rival Ford in their contributions to America’s global economic leadership, yet his life and views remain deeply controversial. Follow Ford’s path from his modest upbringing on a rural Michigan farm to his role as a titan of industry who revolutionized American automobile manufacturing.
You’ll begin with Ford on his family farm, showing an early talent for tinkering with machines that eventually landed him a job as an engineer working for his hero, Thomas Edison. Later, through The Ford Motor Company, Ford pioneered industrial techniques that enabled the company to dominate the field of automobile manufacturing in its earliest stages of development. The Ford Model T, the low-cost automobile that put car ownership within reach of millions of middle and working-class Americans, likewise profoundly changed American culture.
Known for nuanced biographies that depict the human being behind the flashpoint moments, Prof. Webb also tackles the controversies that followed Ford throughout his adult life, particularly his anti-Semitic commentary and dalliance with German fascism. As Webb deftly shows, these associations complicate the traditional picture of Ford as an American business icon, inviting questions about how best to remember the complicated people who have entered the pantheon of great figures in American history.
Revered as a consummate statesman who cemented America's place on the global stage, Franklin Delano Roosevelt affected tremendous change in the United States in course of his career. To understand his life is to understand how the nation claimed world leadership in what many call the American Century.
In this fascinating course, award-winning American history professor Jeffrey Webb introduces you to the man behind the legendary life. You'll begin by learning about FDR's privileged upbringing and early career in public service, explore his unconventional marriage to Eleanor Roosevelt, and recount his life-long struggle with paraplegia beginning at age thirty-nine.
You'll also cover FDR's progressive policies as governor of New York during the Great Depression and the historic New Deal, which set the nation on a new path of social and political development.
Prof. Webb provides enlightening context for FDR's confrontation of the Third Reich and Imperial Japan and his celebrated leadership of the Allies. You'll explore his wartime "home front" policies-including the internment of Japanese Americans-that dramatically expanded the power of the federal government.
In this remarkable series, you'll learn how FDR's mind and career were shaped by the titanic events of his era, and how his leadership in this era of bewildering change defined America's, and the world's future.
This course is part of the Learn25 collection.
Called the "First American" and credited with "Inventing America," Benjamin Franklin lived a life that invites hyperbole. Few rival Franklin for his range of accomplishment across a number of domains of human endeavor, and few lived a life of such consequence in one of history's most consequential eras. In reality, Franklin's true story eclipses the myths that pervade his legacy.
Benjamin Franklin: Made in America traces the fascinating twists and turns that make this Founding Father's story so remarkable. In 15 dynamic audio lectures, award-winning American history professor Jeffrey Webb explores Franklin's career beginning with his post as a young newspaperman and continuing into his leadership roles on the frontiers of cultural, intellectual, political, and scientific developments.
Webb elucidates pivotal moments when Benjamin's contributions helped determine the fate of the continent: the Albany Congress, the Stamp Act debates, and the Treaty of Paris negotiations. He then explores Franklin's significant contributions as a transformational statesman and innovator who discovered the lightning rod, became the country's first successful publisher, and created the public library system.
Perhaps most compelling, Webb shows how Franklin lent his particular genius to champion ideas considered radical in his time: free press and free speech, scientific and technological progress, and the gospel of individual self-improvement.
As you travel throughout Franklin's life with Webb, you'll witness the making of the modern world.
This course is part of the Learn25 collection.
From acclaimed American historian and biographer Jeff Webb, essential listening for history buffs.
Leading presidential historians and public opinion agree-Theodore Roosevelt was one of America's greatest presidents. Through this unique audio course, Professor Webb explores the reasons Roosevelt enjoys such widespread and enduring approval.
As you listen to this engrossing 15-lecture audio series from Prof. Webb, you'll understand why Roosevelt's colorful personality and audacious leadership style so enthralled Americans in the early twentieth century and continue to fascinate us today.
Roosevelt's years in office were marked by executive actions and policy measures that moved the institution along a new path and cemented its influence on the world stage. By stretching the boundaries of executive authority, Roosevelt inaugurated new practices that came to define the modern American presidency.
In this compelling series, you'll examine Roosevelt's early life and political career before he unexpectedly found himself president, at age 42, following William McKinley's assassination in 1901. Then, you'll explore Roosevelt's presidency, noting instances where he blazed new trails for future presidents. A leader with inexhaustible energy and legendary charisma, Roosevelt's celebrity status represented a powerful shift in US political tradition.
Join Prof. Webb to learn how Roosevelt shaped our collective idea of what a US president should be.
This course is part of the Learn25 collection.
Join the acclaimed authors of the encyclopedia of conspiracy theories in exploring some of history's great myths.
In this provocative audio course, you'll travel through time with history and medieval literature experts to learn why the truth about past events is so elusive. Your journey will be helmed by two award-winning scholars: acclaimed literature and mythology professor Christopher Fee and historian Jeffrey Webb.
Profs. Fee and Webb explain that although most of us recognize the value of good history, we often find truthful accounts of the past, frankly, less than inspiring. What really excites us is a tale well told.
Following a timeline that begins in Ancient Greece and ends in 1960s America, Profs. Fee and Webb reveal the surprising truth behind dominant narratives about the 300 Spartans, Columbus's discovery of America, Lincoln's role in Emancipation, Edison's inventions, and much more.
Over the course of 14 lectures, Profs. Fee and Webb explore the relationship between myth and history, surveying the boundary line between legend and fact. They affirm myth's enduring appeal and cultural importance while also highlighting its implicit hazards. Ultimately, they show that disentangling myth from history teaches us valuable lessons about our common humanity.
As you explode some of history's biggest myths, you'll discover how both fact and fiction convey eternal truths.
This course is part of the Learn25 collection.
This brilliant course celebrates the American experiment to test a revolutionary form of government. Today, democracy remains at the core of our nation's political, social, and economic organization. Now, you can explore its miraculous and fragile origins in the colonial and revolutionary eras (1607-1790).
In 15 erudite lectures, celebrated history professor and author Jeffrey B. Webb gets you to realize that there was nothing inevitable about the coming of democracy to America. Specializing in early American history and culture, Prof. Webb begins by revealing how much the weight of history, tradition, and colonists' contemporary experience counseled against democratic systems of government.
The recipient of numerous teaching and research awards - including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities - Prof. Webb guides you through key moments in American history at which our future democratic institutions were shaped and tested.
Throughout, you'll discover the stories of less-familiar people and events from our history: John Winthrop, Robert Keayne, and Bacon's Rebellion, to name a few. In these unsung stories, you will find not only the appeal of democratic ideas but also the disruptive nature of democratic values.
In the end, you will appreciate the American system of government as the most outstanding of contributions by the United States to world history.
