Make American history come alive for your student with this excellent 30- lecture course by nationally recognized educator Linwood Thompson. Covering the first half of America's fascinating history from the settlement of the continent by Native Americans through to the California Gold Rush of 1849, this course is taught with unusual creativity and innovation. Every lesson in the course is "taught" by a particular character. Professor Thompson has an arsenal of costumes, as well as a firm grasp on the personae of great historical figures. He dresses, talks, and acts like them. He actually becomes them! Lin Thompson appears only briefly at the start of this course. He then "becomes" Bjarni Herjolfsson, Viking explorer and incomparable expert on who really discovered America. From that moment, students will know they are in for a fascinating trip as Bjarni gives way to Christopher Columbus, revolutionary war foot soldiers, a French trapper, and a host of other characters who provide a first-person perspective on early American history.