This 11th-grade course continues where Western Civilization to 1492 left off. You will gain the advantage of a second full year of Western civilization, getting to know the personalities and events that created the modern world.

After taking this course — a course to which most curricula devote just half a year, but presented here much more thoroughly as a full-year course — you will be vastly ahead of your peers in terms of your knowledge of critical information that any culturally literate person must know.

This course will familiarize you with all the major schools of political thought in the modern world: liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, socialism, Marxism, nationalism, naturalism, modernism, and more.

It will make you a stronger writer. You’ll be writing regularly, and as the New York Times bestselling author of 12 books, I can assure you that if you want to improve as a writer, there is no substitute for just doing it — again and again.

It will teach you the material in a way designed to ensure you remember it.

Course topics include the Protestant Reformation, wars of religion, absolutism, constitutionalism, the Scientific Revolution, the English Civil War, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, Napoleon, Marxism, German and Italian unification, the world wars, the Russian Revolution and communism, the rise of fascism, the Great Depression, the Cold War, and more.

Parents, you can listen to the course’s 25-minute lessons during your commute or around the house. On each lesson page you’ll find a link to a downloadable audio file. Just right-click (not left-click) on your mouse, and choose the option to save the file to your computer. Every week there will be a writing assignment. In the first video lesson, I explain how the course will work.

Here are the 165 lesson topics:

1. Introduction
2. Review of Western Civilization to 1492
3. The Church on the Eve of the Reformation
4. The German Reformation, Part I
5. Week 1 Review

6. The German Reformation, Part II
7. The German Reformation, Part III
8. Other Protestant Figures
9. John Calvin
10. Week 2 Review

11. The English Reformation, Part I
12. The English Reformation, Part II
13. The Catholic Reformation, Part I
14. The Catholic Reformation, Part II
15. Week 3 Review

16. Sixteenth-Century Portraits: Charles V
17. Sixteenth-Century Portraits: Philip II
18. French Wars of Religion
19. Sixteenth-Century Portraits: Elizabeth I
20. Week 4 Review

21. The “Eutopians”
22. The Thirty Years’ War
23. The English Civil War
24. The Levellers
25. Week 5 Review

26. Oliver Cromwell
27. The Glorious Revolution
28. John Locke, Part I
29. John Locke, Part II
30. Week 6 Review

31. France Before Louis XIV
32. Difficulties and Revolt in Spain
33. Constitutionalism
34. Absolutism
35. Week 7 Review

36. Mercantilism
37. Louis XIV, Part I
38. Louis XIV, Part II
39. The War of the Spanish Succession
40. Week 8 Review

41. The Hohenzollerns
42. The Habsburgs
43. Russia: Peter the Great
44. A Survey of Art
45. Week 9 Review

46. The Scientific Revolution, Part I
47. The Scientific Revolution, Part II
48. The Scientific Revolution, Part III
49. The Enlightenment, Part I
50. Week 10 Review

51. The Enlightenment, Part II
52. Adam Smith
53. Europe in the 18th Century, Part I
54. Europe in the 18th Century, Part II
55. Week 11 Review

56. Enlightened Absolutism
57. The American Revolution, Part I
58. The American Revolution, Part II
59. The American Revolution, Part III
60. Week 12 Review

61. The French Revolution, Part I
62. The French Revolution, Part II
63. The Reign of Terror
64. Napoleon, Part I
65. Week 13 Review

66. Napoleon, Part II
67. The French and American Revolutions Compared
68. Edmund Burke and the French Revolution
69. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Rights of Women
70. Week 14 Review

71. The Industrial Revolution, Part I
72. The Industrial Revolution, Part II
73. Slavery
74. Slavery and Anti-Slavery
75. Week 15 Review

76. What Was the Source of Western Prosperity?
77. The Congress of Vienna
78. The Conservative Reaction, 1815-1830
79. The Rise of State Education
80. Week 16 Review

81. Education Without the State: The Case of England
82. Liberalism, Part I
83. Liberalism, Part II
84. Liberalism, Part III
85. Week 17 Review

86. Liberalism, Part IV
87. Socialism
88. Neoclassicism
89. Romanticism
90. Week 18 Review

91. Midterm Review
92. The Revolutions of 1830
93. The Revolutions of 1848
94. Marxism, Part I
95. Week 19 Review

96. Marxism, Part II
97. Marxism, Part III
98. Marxism, Part IV
99. Naturalism
100. Week 20 Review

101. The Crimean War
102. Italian Unification
103. German Unification
104. The Second Industrial Revolution
105. Week 21 Review

106. Southeastern Europe: New States Emerge
107. France and England in the Late 19th Century
108. Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia
109. Imperialism
110. Week 22 Review

111. Did the West Grow Rich Through Imperialism?
112. Modernism, Part I
113. Modernism, Part II
114. The Coming of World War I
115. Week 23 Review

116. World War I, Part I
117. World War I, Part II
118. World War I, Part III
119. The Paris Peace Conference
120. Week 24 Review

121. The Russian Revolution and Its Aftermath, Part I
122. The Russian Revolution and Its Aftermath, Part II
123. The Russian Revolution and Its Aftermath, Part III
124. The Russian Revolution and Its Aftermath, Part IV
125. Week 25 Review

126. The Broken World of the Interwar Period
127. Communists, Fascists, and Others
128. Nazis!
129. The 1930s and the Coming of the War in Europe
130. Week 26 Review

131. The Beginning of World War II
132. Axis Invasions in Southern and Western Europe
133. The United States as a Neutral
134. Global War: Barbarossa and Pearl Harbor
135. Week 27 Review

136. Total War Mobilization: Propaganda, Production, Transportation
137. Military Matters
138. The Final Solution and Other Mass Murders
139. Bombing and Mass Destruction
140. Week 28 Review

141. 1944: The Beginning of the End: Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, and More
142. Coordinating the Allied Effort: Allied Planning
143. January 1945: Barbarism on All Sides
144. The End of the War
145. Week 29 Review

146. The Axis in Ruins
147. The Nuremberg Trials
148. Origins of the Cold War
149. Two Power Blocks and Orwell’s 1984
150. Week 30 Review

151. The Economic Miracle
152. Decolonization
153. European Union and Cold War
154. The Cold War from the ’50s to the ’70s
155. Week 31 Review

156. Art and Architecture in the Twentieth Century
157. The World of the Sixties
158. The Middle East and Western Civilization to the Seventies
159. The Soviet Union from Brezhnev to Gorbachev
160. Week 32 Review

161. The Collapse of the Soviet Empire
162. Migration, Economics, Nationalism, Ethnic Cleansing
163. The West and the Rise of Asia
164. Liberty, Technology, Science, and the State
165. Week 33 Review