From the Gilder Lehrman website:

"The Cold War ended suddenly with the fall of the Berlin Wall and countless Soviet satellite governments across Eastern Europe before the Soviet Union itself disintegrated in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In this lecture, Thomas Blanton, Director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University explores the last days of the Cold War and explains how, as the Iron Curtain fell, the United States became the last superpower."

Richard Carwardine of the University of Oxford traces the development and shifts of Abraham Lincoln's religious views and their influence on and appearance in his decisions and public statements.

James Oakes of City University of New York examines Abraham Lincoln's views on race and slavery, including his reaction to the Dred Scott Decision. Oakes argues that Lincoln was a racial egalitarian.

Manisha Sinha of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, looks at the influence of black abolitionists on the policies and views of Abraham Lincoln, and the evolution of Lincoln's views on slavery and emancipation.

Sean Wilentz of Princeton University discusses Abraham Lincoln's party allegiances throughout his political career, focusing on his transition from Whig to Republican and his views of Jacksonian Democrats.

Reconstruction after the Civil War was America's first attempt at an interracial democracy. DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University Eric Foner explains why an understanding of Reconstruction—and why it failed—is critical to understanding the civil rights movement of the 20th century.

In this lecture, historian Mary Beth Norton examines the original court documents from the Salem witchcraft trials; she places these well-known events in the context of the Indian wars and other witch trials in New England. The trials, she concludes, were driven more by politics than by superstition.

According to the Gilder Lehrman Institute, "As inscrutable as he was influential, Thomas Jefferson casts a mighty shadow on American history. In this lecture, Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis explores Jefferson’s political ideology—his preference for an agrarian nation and a weak national government, his feelings about democracy, his insistence on the separation of church and state, and belief in individual rights—and suggests that as the United States emerges from the 20th century, it may be moving toward a more Jeffersonian ideal of limited government and the primacy of the individual."

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in Maryland in 1820. After her escape to the North in 1849, she returned to the South more than a dozen times to ferry other slaves along the Underground Railroad. She later helped John Brown recruit men for his Harper's Ferry raid; and during the Civil War, Tubman served as a Union spy. In this lecture, historian Catherine Clinton details not only Tubman's life but also the quest to uncover new information on Tubman.