From Enrico Caruso to the ordinary San Franciscan, this film presents vivid memories of those trapped in the terrifying event of 1906. Four hundred eighty square blocks were reduced to rubble; thousan…

While the U.N. debated strategies for control of atomic energy, the U.S. Navy was preparing two highly-publicized nuclear tests. Seven hundred fifty cameras were shipped to Bikini to be used for a maj…

As a child in 1899, Angie Debo was taken to Oklahoma in a covered wagon. She would become her state's most controversial historian -- her career threatened when she uncovered a cache of documents whic…

A touching memoir beginning with life in a small Minnesota town and taking us through a young man's early days as pacifist. Reporting on the rise of fascism in Europe, Sevareid, as a young CBS reporte…

An original look through newsreels, war department films, posters and interviews with five, real-life "Rosies" about the reality of working in the defense plants during WWII, and their reactions to ha…

A year in the life of Wyoming cowboys and the ranching families who have lived in Big Piney for six generations. Although very much the same as it was one hundred years ago -- tough, lonely, but still…

An intimate portrait of the Kennedy brothers and their confrontation with Alabama Governor George Wallace when he defied the courts by refusing to integrate the University in 1963. The film offers unp…

The story of a tragic collision of two civilizations, each with startlingly different views of one another. In 1886, 5,000 U.S. troops mobilized to capture this one man and his band of followers, who …

An updated look at the Alabama tenant families that Walker Evans and James Agee documented in their 1936 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, an American classic.

The evolution of rhythm and blues through the careers of singers Ruth Brown and Charles Brown, from the 1940s into the 50s, with contemporary performances by both.

Father Charles Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest from Michigan, uses the new power of radio to become one of the first media stars; every Sunday he would broadcast his message railing against the nati…

The design and art of quilting yields intimate clues about the lives of 19th century women, who stitched their personal and political stories into these artifacts of history.

The journey of Prince Maximilian, German naturalist, and artist Karl Bodmer, who explored the Mississippi River area from 1832-34, meticulously documenting in paintings and journals the landscape, pla…

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Eudora Welty narrates the story of her own Southern childhood and early artistic development in Jackson, Mississippi. Based on her best-selling book of the same title.

From the late 1920s through the 1960s, Robert Moses held almost total power over the landscape of New York. He built bridges, highways, Jones Beach, Lincoln Center and the United Nations, some of the …

A Gothic tale of sin and redemption in 19th century New England. A small town in Maine reacts to the unconventional behavior of one of its young residents, a woman named Emeline Gurney. A fascinating …

The first around-the-world air race, sponsored by the Army Air Service to prove that the airplane had a commercial future, was the ultimate test of man and machine. Four pilots took off in single-engi…

Prohibition's effect on Detroit, Michigan, the first major American city to "go dry," where smuggling liquor across the Canadian border became the second largest indusry in town. A humorous, wild tale…

Lise Yasui explores three generations of her Japanese-American family - from their immigration to Oregon in the early 1900s through their imprisonment in internment camps during World War Two.

All lingering 19th-century notions of the romance of battle were replaced by the terrible reality of 20th-century mechanized warfare. At Verdun, the French lost 300,000 men; at the Somme, the English …

The tale of mavericks whose risk-taking, sweat and dreams changed an American industry. Starting with Spindletop, the first Texas gusher in 1902, rare archival film and interviews with pioneering oilm…

There is hardly a city, town or village without a baseball diamond. More than a game, baseball is a tradition, rite of passage, an enduring passion, a code for understanding the culture. A wry, philos…

They started selling watches. Then Richard Sears and Alva Curtis Roebuck started a revolution -- a "wish book" that made life on the farm a little easier and put consumer goods within reach of every A…

A stunning film portrait of Yosemite National Park. The film's narration is taken from using the 1851 diary of the first expedition of soldiers into the sacred valley home of the Ahwahnechee tribe and…

Affluent, handsome, light-skinned and blond, he could pass for white. But his message about "economics and jobs" would make him one of the most charismatic black leaders in the 20th century. A U.S. Re…

A tribute to the twelve million people who emigrated to the U.S. between 1890 and 1920. A recapturing of the journey through Europe to seaport towns, to the arrival in New York Harbor, and into the ea…

Bascom Lamar Lunsford was a pioneer folklorist who in the 1920s began a campaign to preserve mountain music and dance. He dignified what was known as "hillbilly music." Knocking on doors of local banj…

Born into slavery, she became a journalist and newspaper owner in Memphis, and was radicalized following the lynching of three friends. Her crusade against lynching led to death threats, but she brave…

In the summer of 1940, as the German Luftwaffe began its assault on England, 10,000 British children were sent on a perilous sea voyage to safe havens in the United States. There, they forged life-lon…

Before WWII, San Francisco's Chinatown was a separate world, closed to outsiders, ruled by rigid homeland customs. But in the 1930s, second generation Chinese Americans defied cultural tradition to pu…

The first major battle for wilderness preservation erupted over the building of Hetch Hetchy Dam in Yosemite National Park in 1906. On the one side were the purists who argued that wildlands were to b…

Men and women, black and white, risked their lives to carve an elaborate network of escape routes out of slavery in the mid 1800s -- trails and backroads, safehouses, river crossings and night trains …

At 25, Charles A. Lindbergh arrived in Paris, the first man to fly across the Atlantic -- handsome, talented, and brave -- a hero. But the struggle to wear the mantle of legend would be a consuming on…

He possessed a fateful combination of strengths and weaknesses that propelled him to the White House and then brought him down. One of the most enigmatic modern political figures, Richard Nixon inspir…

He possessed a fateful combination of strengths and weaknesses that propelled him to the White House and then brought him down. One of the most enigmatic modern political figures, Richard Nixon inspir…

He possessed a fateful combination of strengths and weaknesses that propelled him to the White House and then brought him down. One of the most enigmatic modern political figures, Richard Nixon inspir…

Frank Popiolek was 14 when he came to America in 1911, one of 2 million Polish immigrants who made the journey. He settled in Chicago and became a barber, instilling in his family a love of the "old w…

On July 2, 1881, Charles Julius Guiteau shot and fatally wounded President James A. Garfield in the lobby of the Baltimore & Potomac train station in Washington, D.C. As sensational as the assassinati…

Few events shocked America more than the news in 1957 that Russia had launched the first satellite. It was an assault on our national pride, even a threat to national security. Using news reels, comme…

In 1929, while the stock market was rising, there were few critics. It was a "New Era" when everyone could get rich. But it was a small group of bankers, brokers and speculators who by manipulating th…

A tale of high adventure, enormous human effort and engineering brilliance. On May 2, 1869, when the last railroad spike was driven, bells in the churches of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Omaha and…

When French settlers, exiled from Nova Scotia, migrated to Louisiana in the 1750s, they mixed with African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, and others to create one of America's richest, most varied cultur…

After the stock market crashed in 1929, thousands suffered unemployment and poverty in the Great Depression. The most desperate year, 1932, brought World War I veterans' Bonus March, the election of P…

The story of Mexican American miners -- "los mineros" -- whose pitched labor battles, beginning with the first strike in 1903, shaped the course of Arizona history. It was only in 1946 that the two-ti…

Before there was Disneyland, there was Coney Island. By the turn of the century, this tiny spit of New York real estate was internationally famous as the world's most remarkable carnival of delights, …

LBJ's career started in 1938 when he was elected a congressman, one of the youngest ever. He was elected to the Senate in 1948 under a cloud of suspicion. LBJ won by only 87 votes. In 1954, when the D…

Lyndon Johnson's ascension to the Presidency and the controversial events of his tenure such as the Great Society and the Vietnam War are chronicled here.

The first officially formed regiment of northern black soldiers who fought in the Civil War, the 54th's roster included shopkeepers, clerks, cobblers and seamen. They knew the eyes of the nation would…

James Michael Curley dominated Boston's politics for almost half a century, building a sophisticated political machine based on rhetoric, old-fashioned patronage and sheer personal will. In 1903, he r…

By an abandoned earthen dam, at a mountain resort 14 miles up the valley, the leaders of industry and their families created an exclusive summer retreat. But the structure of the dam was fatally flawe…

The shock of what happened on December 7, 1941 has made Pearl Harbor a synonym for deceit and unpreparedness. Produced for the 50th anniversary, this examination of events shows the attack could have …

The rise of the FBI from a minor government bureaucracy to the premiere law enforcement agency in the world under the controversial leadership of J. Edgar Hoover.

At a time when black and white musicians rarely performed together, when black musicians were exploited by record companies, Ellington was an international star. He made the Cotton Club his showcase f…

When CBS premiered The $64,000 Question in 1955, the show was more than a hit; it was a national phenomenon. More quiz shows followed. What the audience was to learn, much later, was that many of thes…

Eugene Dennis fled to Moscow to avoid indictment and prison for his work for the American Communist Party in the late 1920s; his wife Peggy and 18-month-old son soon followed. In 1935, they were reass…

For years there was no federal law to protect the shrinking wilderness from encroaching industry and tourism, until three men dedicated their lives to finding a remedy. Robert Marshall, Aldo Leopold, …

P.T. Barnum was huckster, con man, promoter and entertainer. His American Museum featured ancient relics side by side with such "living curiosities" as lions, snakes, bearded ladies and Siamese twins.…

In 1875, in St. Augustine, Florida, an ambitious experiment was conceived -- to teach Native Americans to become imitation white men. With the blessing of Congress, the first school for Indians was es…

No family has had such a powerful hold on the American imagination. A saga of ambition, wealth, family loyalty and personal tragedy, the Kennedy story is unlike any other. From Joseph Kennedy's rise o…

No family has had such a powerful hold on the American imagination. A saga of ambition, wealth, family loyalty and personal tragedy, the Kennedy story is unlike any other. From Joseph Kennedy's rise o…

Of all the 19th century pioneer stories, none exerts so powerful a hold on the American imagination as this, during the worst winter ever recorded in the High Sierras. In June, 1846, 87 men, women and…

He was bumbling, yet ambitious. He volunteered to serve his country, but insisted on being reimbursed for expenses. He was the most famous general of the Revolution but a dismal tactician on the battl…

In 1876, when the U.S. Army planned its biggest Indian campaign yet against Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, General George Custer led the chase. Custer and his 210 men were surprised and surrounded, the…

John Phillip Sousa became America's favorite bandmaster, but band music wasn't Sousa's only passion. He was the first to bring the classics -- Verdi, Wagner, Puccini -- to a burgeoning American middle…

Thirty years after the Supreme Court's "separate but equal" ruling, lawyer Charles Hamilton took over Howard University's rundown, segregated law school with the idea of training a cadre of elite Afri…

When he died in 1931 in a plane crash on his way to Hollywood to sign a film contract, the President called it a "national loss." The funeral was broadcast live on CBS Radio to Europe, South America a…

In 1936, Walter Reuther led one of the bitterest, bloodiest battles ever fought in the history of the American labor movement. By sitting down and stopping the machinery of factory production, auto wo…

She had been a biologist for the federal government when she first took note of the effects of the unregulated use of pesticides and herbicides, especially DDT. Magazines refused to publish her articl…

In Tulsa, the community of Greenwood was a place where blacks had some measure of financial, social and political independence. Burned to the ground in 1921 by angry whites, Greenwood was rebuilt and …

When "Ishi," the last surviving member of a small Indian tribe, walked into the small California town of Oroville in 1911, he became a media curiosity and scientific "specimen." The San Francisco Muse…

The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, Amelia Earhart was one of America's first celebrities. After only a few years as a pilot she became the best-known female flier in America, not only fo…

Pancho Villa's raid on Columbus, New Mexico, was the culmination of years of bloody incidents along the border. For Americans, it was the last straw. In 1916, General John Pershing and his 150,000 man…

Dwight D. Eisenhower was a decorated general, a skillful politician, a tough Cold War adversary and one of America's least understood presidents. Part of the award-winning Presidents collection.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was a decorated general, a skillful politician, a tough Cold War adversary and one of America's least understood presidents. Part of the award-winning Presidents collection.

If any man expressed the anger, struggle and insistence of black people for freedom in the sixties, it was Malcolm X. In Omaha, he was Malcolm Little; later he became "Detroit Red" a small time street…

Complex social and political factors shaped America's response to the Holocaust, from Kristallnacht in 1938 through the liberation of the death camps in 1945. For a short time, the U.S. had an opportu…

It was truly a "battle of the world," a pivotal turning point in history, and the most dramatic single event in WWII. A military operation fraught with incalculable risk; the secret campaign was a tri…

The Hurricane of '38 chronicles the lives of fishermen, residents and vacationers on the day before the storm, following their stories through one of the greatest natural disasters ever to befall the …

Polio at age 39, president at age 50. Explore the public and private life of a determined man who steered the United States through two monumental crises: the Depression and World War II. FDR served a…

In this second episode, the subject is FDR's courageous fight with polio. With his wife Eleanor Roosevelt at his side, FDR, wins the Democratic nomination for president. He takes office at the beginni…

In episode 3, the subject is FDR's leadership of America during the Great Depression. The nation turned to this son of great wealth for a host of social programs that promised a New Deal for the commo…

The portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt concludes with his years as preside (1932 until his death in 1945), how he dealt with the Great Depression, and his link with Winston Churchill during World W…

For 40 years, a new religion called spiritualism affected the nation as no other ever had. Abraham Lincoln, P.T. Barnum, Frederick Douglass, senators, and scientists argued over the discoveries of the…

The little-known story of a black independent film industry that thrived outside of Hollywood and produced close to 500 feature movies for African American audiences between 1910 and 1940. Many race m…

The history of World War II's "Battle of the Bulge", when the German army launched a major surprise counteroffensive against the American forces that caught them almost completely off-guard, sweeping …

From Elizabeth Cady Stanton's electrifying call to arms at Seneca Falls in 1848, to the last battle for passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, a recounting of the infighting, the alliances and b…

From Elizabeth Cady Stanton's electrifying call to arms at Seneca Falls in 1848, to the last battle for passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, a recounting of the infighting, the alliances and b…

A six-hour documentary of how the West was lost and won, from the time of the Gold Rush in 1848 until after the last gasp of the Indian Wars at Wounded Knee in 1893, when the West was settled, subdued…

A six-hour documentary of how the West was lost and won, from the time of the Gold Rush in 1848 until after the last gasp of the Indian Wars at Wounded Knee in 1893, when the West was settled, subdued…

A six-hour documentary of how the West was lost and won, from the time of the Gold Rush in 1848 until after the last gasp of the Indian Wars at Wounded Knee in 1893, when the West was settled, subdued…

A six-hour documentary of how the West was lost and won, from the time of the Gold Rush in 1848 until after the last gasp of the Indian Wars at Wounded Knee in 1893, when the West was settled, subdued…

In 1906, the murder of Stanford White, New York architect and man-about-town, by Harry K. Thaw, heir to a Pittsburgh railroad fortune, was reported "to the ends of the civilized globe;" much of the fo…

In 1878, Thomas Edison announced his intention to harness Niagara Falls and produce a safe, electric light system. He said he could do it in six weeks. Almost three years later, all the components -- …

While America was reeling from the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King and public outcry against the Vietnam War, the Democrats held their convention in Chicago. Yippie and anti-wa…

In the mid 19th century, thousands of children roamed the streets of New York in search of money, food and shelter. In an ambitious and controversial effort to rescue them, between 1854 and 1929 more …

In the summer of 1964, two groups converged in Mississippi: one mostly young, white and well educated from out of state; the other, African Americans who lived in the most violently segregated state. …

Richard J. Daley was born on a street he would never leave and christened in the small church in which he would be buried. His climb up the political ladder to become Mayor was slow and methodical; in…

A thinly-veiled portrait of the immensely powerful newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, the movie created a buzz long before it was released. Most people thought it the work of a genius, but Hea…

Theirs is a quintessential American story of two midwestern boys who believed they could break the barrier of the air, succeeding where others with government grants and engineering educations had fai…

In the spring of 1960, Francis Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. Overnight, this top-secret plane became the most famous aircraft in the world. Behind the incident was a …

TR is born into a wealthy New York family that has a strong sense of social justice. He fights his severe asthma through a strenuous exercise program. He becomes New York State assemblyman. Then trage…

After McKinley's assassination, Roosevelt becomes an "accidental" president. Seeing himself as a crusader, TR uses the presidency to advance his agenda of social reform. He expands the power of the pr…

A look at the poor emigrant boy who built a fortune in railroads and steel, and, unlike any industrialist of his time, began to systematically give it away; a man full of contradictions and inner conf…

Liliu'okalani moved easily between two worlds -- she had dined at the White House, had been a guest at Buckingham Palace, yet never abandoned her Hawaiian traditions. A writer and composer, she was th…

At first rented only "to persons of good breeding," seen as an expensive luxury for doctors and businessmen, within a decade the telephone had begun to transform American life. Trees gave way to telep…

The little known story of Philo T. Farnsworth, a Utah farm boy who first sketched out his idea for electronic television at the age of fourteen. An eccentric genius, Farnsworth spent years battling co…

It began with the blizzard of 1888 -- mountains of snow twenty feet high, horse cars and omnibuses abandoned, the city paralyzed. There was no doubt New York needed a public transportation system. It …

A story of the realities leading to the vanishing role of the family farm in the United States.

At the age of nineteen, Nellie Bly talked her way into an improbable job on a newspaper, then went on to become "the best reporter in America." She was serious and spunky. To expose abuse of the menta…

The 1890's in America were desperate times. A depression brought bank and business failures and forced millions of men and women from their jobs. When gold was discovered in a frozen no man's land bet…

"Vietnam: A Television History" begins by tracing the "Roots of a War" to French colonialism. "America's Mandarin" looks at the start of America's involvement in Vietnam during the 1950s and '60s.

LBJ Goes to War (1964-65) examines the escalating American involvement following the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Interviewed: Gen. William Westmoreland (USA Ret.) and former Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

In "America Takes Charge (1965-67)," GIs recall combat experiences during the years of U.S. military escalation. Also: a sequence in which Americans and Vietnamese describe the same operation.

As "Vietnam: A Television History" continues, "America's Enemy (1954-67)" examines the escalating war from the point of view of North Vietnamese leaders and their followers, beginning with the country…

Vietnam: A Television History": TV-news footage graphically recalls "Tet 1968," the bold North Vietnamese and Vietcong offensive. The attacks gave the enemy a "brilliant political victory" in the U.S,…

"Vietnam: A Television History": The gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops and their replacement by the South Vietnamese are recalled in "Vietnamizing the War (1968-73)." But morale was low among American…

America's involvement in—and secret bombing of—Cambodia and Laos are chronicled as "Vietnam: A Television History" continues. After the bombing halt in August 1973, the Communist Khmer Rouge advanced …

"Vietnam: A Television History": "Peace Is at Hand (1968-73)" recalls the peace negotiations in Paris, including Henry Kissinger's "secret" talks with Le Duc Tho. As the talks dragged on, the U.S. ste…

"Vietnam: A Television History - Homefront U.S.A.," traces the widening rift between supporters and opponents of the war, from the first demonstrations in the mid-1960s to the May 1970 Kent State shoo…

"Vietnam: A Television History" concludes with "The End of the Tunnel," which recalls the 1973 Paris accords and the subsequent collapse of South Vietnam. Included: vivid footage of helicopter evacuat…

TR is just 46 years old when he is inaugurated as president. He builds the Panama Canal, wins the Nobel Prize for Peace, and combatively introduces widesweeping social reforms. As his presidency draws…

TR opposes his old friend Taft for the 1912 Republican nomination. When Taft wins, TR runs for president with his own Progressive Party. Despite enormous popular support, he loses to Democrat Woodrow …

A study of Harry S. Truman, the 33rd president. Part 1 covers his service during World War I; his accomplishments as a small-time Kansas City politician; his two terms as a Missouri senator.

Harry S. Truman recalls his post-WWII economic policies; his 1948 presidential campaign; the Korean War; and his celebrated clash with Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Chronicling the efforts of historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich to gather facts about early American life through the diaries of Maine resident and midwife Martha Ballard (1735?-1812). Included: dramatiza…

Recalling the life of Carl Fisher, the entrepreneur who “sold the glamour of Florida” and turned a swampland into Miami Beach. Included: how he developed the resort town using topsoil from the Evergla…

Chronicling the epidemic of the Spanish flu in 1918, which claimed “more than 600,000 lives.” Included: futile attempts to develop a vaccine; and how the virus spread to Europe.

The life and legacy of Ronald Reagan are examined in a two-part study, beginning with his impoverished childhood; his start as a radio sportscaster and career as an actor; his two terms as governor of…

The conclusion of a biography of Ronald Reagan focuses on the president's second term and includes his defense-spending policies and the Iran-Contra scandal.

Children of 1930s Plains farmers recall the Dust Bowl, the eight-year drought that was made far worse by the 30 years of aggressive farming that preceded it. "A lot of people thought it was the end of…

During the Depression-era 1930's, tens of thousands of teenagers hopped freight trains in search of a better life elsewhere. What they found was a mixture of adventure, camaraderie, hardship and lonel…

Over one hundred years ago, Americans looked forward to the uncertainty of a new century with a mixture of confidence, optimism and anxiety. Following a range of characters from famous public figures …

At the dawn of the Cold War, the United States initiated a top secret program in New Mexico to build a weapon even more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Japan. A world away, on the frozen step…

Rising more than 700 feet above the raging waters of the Colorado River, it was called one of the greatest engineering works in history. Hoover Dam, built during the Great Depression, drew men despera…

In June 1934, Richard Byrd lay alone in a small hut within the polar ice, hovering near death. No one before Byrd had ever experienced winter in the interior of the Antarctic. In an age of heroes, he …

On January 23, 1909, two ships -- one carrying Italian immigrants to New York City, the other, American tourists to Europe -- collided in dense fog off Nantucket Island. In a moment, more than 1,500 l…

At 4:00am on March 28, 1979, a reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power facility near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania suddenly overheated, releasing radioactive gasses. During the ensuing tension-packe…

In the summer of 1869, a one-armed Civil War veteran led the first expedition down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. John Wesley Powell's epic journey into the unknown established the Grand…

Part 1 of a two-part biography of Douglas MacArthur takes "America's first soldier" from his brilliant WWI service into WWII, when his knack for alienating superiors hindered his "return" to the Phili…

The conclusion of "MacArthur" focuses on his "return" to the Philippines in 1944, his years as Supreme Allied Commander in Japan after the war and his controversial command in Korea. Interviewed: onet…

During WWII, more than a thousand women signed up to fly with the U.S. military. Wives, mothers, actresses and debutantes who joined the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS) test-piloted aircraft, fe…

The Country and the City, 1609-1825: New York, notes narrator David Ogden Stiers, "was a business proposition from the very start," when Henry Hudson, exploring for the Dutch East India Company, sail…

"Order and Disorder: 1825-1865" recalls a period of tremendous growth and ferment. Most of the new arrivals were Irish immigrants (100,000 by 1842—and that was before the potato famine), and the subse…

"Sunshine and Shadow: 1865-1898" During the Gilded Age, New York "was home to the greatest concentration of wealth in human history," says narrator David Ogden Stiers. And, he adds, "the greatest conc…

"The Power and the People: 1898-1914" recalls the era of mass immigration. "The entire world would arrive on the city's doorstep," says narrator David Ogden Stiers (1.2-million in 1907 alone). "There …

"Cosmopolis: 1914-1931" recalls the WWI years and the "Roaring '20s" in the city that F. Scott Fitzgerald called "the land of ambition and success." Of course, an egg was laid on Wall Street in 1929, …

Profiling Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), the wife of one president, the niece of another and, says historian Geoffrey Ward, "one of the best politicians of the 20th century" in her own right. That's a…

Mandy Patinkin narrates a biography of Harry Houdini (1874-1926) that focuses on his amazing feats (later ones are seen in clips; others are re-created) and the obsessions---notably his mother and dea…

Charting the tortuous three-year gambit that led to Richard Nixon's historic February 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China. What it did, says narrator David Ogden Stiers, was “alter the global…

The duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, narrator Linda Hunt says, was an 1804 gunfight between “the founder of American capitalism and the first modern American politician.” Included: prof…

John Brown could be seen as a hero or a madman (perhaps both), but either way, there's no doubt he played a role in igniting the Civil War. Actor Joe Morton narrates a chronicle of Brown's life (1800-…

A haunting two-part profile of George Wallace, who, says narrator Randy Quaid, "divided a nation and launched a conservative movement that transformed the country." Part 1 covers Wallace's career up t…

The conclusion of a two-part profile of George Wallace (1919-98) focuses on his Presidential campaigns and the 1972 attempt on his life, which left him paralyzed. "He loved power," says his daughter P…

Former slaves spread the gospel of African-American music in an inspiring 2000 chronicle of the 1870s Tennessee vocal group Jubilee Singers that introduced such songs as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and…

An atmospheric profile of Joe DiMaggio (1914-99), baseball's "Yankee Clipper," explores how and why he played what narrator (and co-writer) Richard Ben Kramer calls "the hero's game" by projecting -- …

Profiling George Eastman (1854-1932), whose Kodak and Brownie cameras "forever changed the way people see their world," says narrator Judith Light. The hour uses interviews with historians and, of cou…

A dramatic two-part profile of the Rockefellers, a family whose name is synonymous with wealth, begins. Part 1 traces how John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) struck oil (figuratively) in the 1860s and par…

The conclusion of a profile of the Rockefellers explores how John D. Jr. accomplished "the seemingly impossible task of redeeming the family name," says narrator David Ogden Stiers. "Junior" (1874-196…

Charting the life on the Mississippi of James B. Eads (1820-1887), "one of the greatest engineering geniuses of all time," says narrator David McCullough. Eads designed, built and financed ironclad ri…

Vietnam POWs recall their ordeals -- at times with great poignancy -- in a first-person history that supplements the comments with North Vietnamese war footage. As the veterans describe it here, their…

Recalling the stainless steel trains that crisscrossed the country in high style (and at speeds of greater than 100 mph) during the 1930s and '40s. The streamliners -- most notably the Union Pacific's…

Recalling racial-pride advocate Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), whose grand (some said grandiose) vision included an Africa run by Africans. Garvey's Harlem-based United Negro Improvement Association was m…

Part 1 and 2 of a six-part chronicle of the Abraham Lincoln-Mary Todd relationship begins with their childhoods and courtship. He, of course, was born into poverty; she, however, grew up in luxury, th…

When the Lincolns arrive in Washington, D.C., in 1861, the president-elect is deemed untested and is mistrusted; Mary, meanwhile, is suspected of being a Confederate sympathizer due to being the daugh…

The third part recalls 1863, when opposition to the Civil War spread among Northerners: some see the high level of casualties as unacceptable, while others resent fighting to free black slaves. Abraha…

Following the 17-year struggle to free nine blacks falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931. The struggle, which involved communist activists and laid the groundwork for the civil-…

Recalling the tidal wave of racial conflict that followed in the wake of the surging Mississippi as it inundated the delta town of Greenville, Miss., in April 1927. Greenville's leading planter, LeRoy…

A profile of quintessentially American composer Stephen Foster features interviews with historian Fath Ruffins, biographer Ken Emerson, musicologists Josephine Wright and Dale Cockrell, and modern-day…

"City of Tomorrow (1929-45)" focuses on Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who used his close ties to FDR to make the city "a gigantic laboratory of civic reconstruction"; and master builder Robert Moses, who …

Conclusion. "The City and the World" begins in 1945, with New York "at the pinnacle," says historian David McCullough. By 1975 it was: "Ford to City: Drop Dead," as a Daily News headline put it. The p…

War letters from the American Revolution to the Gulf War are read by 15 actors (including Joan Allen, Edward Norton, Kevin Spacey and Courtney B. Vance). Accompanied by clips, home movies and re-creat…

A two-part profile of Woodrow Wilson in which news clips, atmospheric re-creations and readings (Rene Auberjonois and Blair Brown provide the voices of Wilson and his first wife, Ellen) supplement int…

Woodrow Wilson reluctantly enters World War I in an effort to "make the world safe for democracy" as this two-part profile concludes. He wins the war but loses the peace, as he's confounded first by t…

Chronicling the 16-year struggle (1925-41) to fashion Mount Rushmore in South Dakota's Black Hills, and profiling sculptor Gutzon Borglum, its creator. Borglum was 60 when plans for Rushmore were anno…

Recalling the 80-year history of the Miss America Pageant and what narrator Cherry Jones calls "a barometer of America's shifting ideas of American womanhood." Included: eight former Miss Americas rec…

"Zoot Suit Riots" recalls a week of violence that rocked Los Angeles in June 1943, pitting Mexican-Americans against Anglos, many of them servicemen. Hector Elizondo narrates the hour, which uses atmo…

Recalling the "epic battle" over evolution waged in 1925 by fundamentalist titan William Jennings Bryan and freethinking Clarence Darrow. This chronicle also explores trial oddities. It was held in Da…

John Dillinger may have been "Public Enemy No. 1" in 1933 and '34, but Americans didn't reflexively hate him, and this hour explores reasons why as it chronicles his 14-month bank-robbing spree. Dilli…

Ric Burns' profile of the photographer whose connection to Yosemite is such that a mountain near the park is named for him. Adams (1902-84) first visited Yosemite at age 14. "It completely changed his…

Mathematics genius John Nash recalls his bout with schizophrenia (the subject dramatized in the Oscar-winning film "A Beautiful Mind"). Nash is joined by his wife, Alicia; son John Stier; colleagues; …

A moody two-part biography of Ulysses S. Grant (1822-85). Part 1, "Warrior," quickly sketches his largely unsuccessful pre-Civil War life and ends on Good Friday 1865, when his wife told him to turn d…

The conclusion of this biography of Ulysses S. Grant (1822-85) covers the last 20 years of the life of "the most popular man of the 19th century," as historian Donald Miller calls him. Grant's preside…

An evocative two-part profile of Jimmy Carter explores how his career has been shaped by what former speechwriter Hendrik Hertzberg calls his "moral ideology." Produced by Adriana Bosch ("American Exp…

"Hostage," the conclusion of a two-part Jimmy Carter biography, covers his presidency and post-presidency. Human rights were to be "a basic tenet of our foreign policy," Carter declared in 1977, but h…

A three-part history based on historian Donald L. Miller's book "City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America." Part 1 begins with the arrival of French explorers Marquette and J…

A three-part history based on historian Donald L. Miller's book "City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America." Part 2 covers the 1870s and '80s, when the city's can-do business…

A three-part history based on historian Donald L. Miller's book "City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America." Part 3 concludes by exploring the city's ethnic and class tension…

Recalling the 1955 murder of a 14-year-old black youth in the Mississippi delta, an incident that could very well have launched the civil-rights movement. "He was a sacrificial lamb," says Mamie Till …

Charting the race between the Union Pacific and Central Pacific to construct a transcontinental railroad to link the U.S. It ended May 10, 1869, in Promontory Point, Utah. The construction was "the en…

Chronicling the unlikely partnership between a white surgeon and a black "technician" that led to a procedure to correct blue-baby syndrome in 1944. The principals: Vivien Thomas, a black man with onl…

Charting the development of an oral contraceptive during the 1950s and its effect on "the sexual revolution" of the '60s. It was enormous. Says Sylvia Clark, who grew up before the pill was available:…

"Daughter from Danang," an Oscar-nominated documentary, chronicles the tearful reunion of an Amerasian refugee with her Vietnamese family 22 years after the war ended. Heidi Bub, who was airlifted out…

"Seabiscuit" recalls the squat and ugly racehorse that riveted the nation in the late 1930s. Interviewees include author Laura Hillenbrand ("Seabiscuit: An American Legend"), who charts the Cinderella…

"Bataan Rescue," narrated by Scott Glenn, recalls the daring January 1945 commando raid that freed 513 survivors of the 1942 Bataan Death March who were being held in a Japanese POW camp in the Philip…

Historian Simon Schama ("A History of Britain") plays sleuth -- searching, he says, "not for literal truth, but for poetic truth" -- as he speculates about whether an innocent man was executed for a 1…

Filmmaker Ric Burns adds a poignant postscript to his series "New York: A Documentary Film" with this chronicle of the World Trade Center's rise and fall. Burns recounts Sept. 11 wrenchingly, but he d…

"Reconstruction: The Second Civil War," a two-part report, follows political leaders and ordinary Americans alike as it chronicles one of the most contentious periods in American history. "An old soci…

"Reconstruction" concludes by following whites and blacks in Georgia, South Carolina and Louisiana between 1867 and 1877. It begins with the granting of widespread voting rights for blacks in the Sout…

"Citizen King," a reverential chronicle of the final five years of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, employs eyewitnesses to the history King made to recall it. Among them: Coretta Scott King, forme…

"Remember the Alamo" recalls the contributions of Tejanos (Hispanic Texans) to the struggle for Texan independence. It profiles Tejano leader Jose Antonio Navarro (1795-1871), an ally of Stephen F. Au…

"Modern dishes for modern living" (and they "burped," no less), sold by women at "home parties." This slice of 1950s Americana is recalled in "Tupperware!" "The era and the product were made for each …

Recalling Emma Goldman (1869-1940), the fiery and formidable radical whose life, says narrator Blair Brown, was "dedicated to free speech, free thought and free love." This profile is sympathetic to G…

"Patriots Day" follows Revolutionary War re-enactors as they prepare to re-fire those shots heard 'round the world on April 19, 1775, in Lexington and Concord. Filmmaker Marian Marzynski's style is lo…

Recalling the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, a "graceful leap over an unprecedented space," as narrator David Ogden Stiers calls it. The Golden Gate presented its engineers with a "magnificen…

A shy, if driven man, Robert Kennedy "wasn't built for the spotlight, he was built for the wings," says journalist Jack Newfield. While John Kennedy was alive, that's where Bobby stayed -- making cert…

"The Fight" recalls the June 1938 heavyweight title bout between Joe Louis and the German Max Schmeling, and assesses its political and social ramifications. "It was going to pit whole nations and who…

Fidel Castro's march through Cuba and the second half of the 20th century is chronicled by filmmaker Adriana Bosch. Here, Cuban exiles and former Castro confreres, foreign-policy experts, a former Cas…

Recalls the construction of the 1500-mile "shortcut to Tokyo" through Canada in 1942 by 11,000 U.S. troops (4,000 of them black). It wasn't the Army's greatest World War II triumph, but it was one of …

Profiling Dr. Alfred Kinsey, the Indiana University zoologist whose "revolutionary picture of American sexuality" rocked the country in the late 1940s and early '50s. Filmmakers Barak Goodman and John…

Profiling Mary Pickford, the silent-screen "sweetheart" who blazed the trail to Hollywood and became "America's first superstar." Pickford (1893-1979) was also an astute businesswoman: She founded Uni…

Cyrus Field's struggle to lay telegraph cables across the Atlantic in the 1850s and '60s is chronicled. When Field finally succeeded, in 1866, it marked "the annihilation of space and time," says hist…

"The Massie Affair" chronicles a 1931 Honolulu rape case involving a young white Navy wife that became even more serious when one of the acquitted Hawaiian defendants was later kidnapped and murdered.…

Recalls "the first family of country music" in interviews with Carter relatives, music writers, and singers Gillian Welch, Joan Baez, Marty Stuart and Rodney Crowell. The tough early lives of A.P. Car…

"Two Days in October" recalls two 1967 events -- a Vietcong ambush and a violent antiwar demonstration at the University of Wisconsin -- that together marked a turning point in America's Vietnam trage…

"Race to the Moon" chronicles Apollo 8, the first voyage to the moon. "It was an event beyond all other events," says Walter Cronkite of the December 1968 mission, which laid the groundwork for the fi…

The story of the gambling mecca is told via news clips and reminiscences. Part 1 of 2

News clips and reminiscences tell the story of the gambling mecca, from a dusty railroad town to a leading tourist attraction. Part 2 of 2

An engrossing portrait of the second U.S. president and first lady, costars Simon Russell Beale and Linda Emond. Included: the friendship (and enmity) between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (James Ba…

A gripping study of the groundbreaking prosecution, which began Nov. 20, 1945, as Nazi Germany's leaders were held accountable for war crimes, infamously blamed on "following orders." Profiled are Her…

A striking profile of the outlaw (1847-82) is told through reenactments, comments from historians and archival photographs. The hour traces James' life from age 16 to his death at 34 (he was shot in t…

A look at the coordinated hijacking of four jetliners in 1970 by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which blew up the evacuated planes in Jordan. Included: the militants' use of civili…

An absorbing profile of the esteemed playwright (1888-1953). Included: excerpts from his plays are performed by Al Pacino, Zoe Caldwell, Christopher Plummer, Vanessa Redgrave, Liam Neeson and Natasha …

The absorbing story of David Vetter (1971-84), who had severe combined immunodeficiency and lived inside a sterile plastic chamber for 12 years. Included: comments from his mother, Carol Ann Vetter De…

The history of the Alaska Pipeline, which was built in the 1970s to transport oil across 800 miles of pristine wilderness, from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. Included: the 1968 discovery of the largest oil f…

An on-target profile of the sharpshooter (1860-1926) who was “the first American woman ever to become a superstar.” Included: Oakley, at 15, winning a shooting match with future husband Frank Butler; …

A profile of Joseph Goebbels (1897-45), who helped launch Hitler's rise to power. Kenneth Branagh provides voice-over readings of Goebbels' personal diaries. Included: footage from German archives tra…

Part 1 of 3 of the award-winning 1987 documentary "Eyes on the Prize." Included: profiles of Mose Wright and Rosa Parks; conflicts sparked by the Supreme Court's 1955 ruling that schools should be int…

Part 2 of the 1987 documentary "Eyes on the Prize." Included: the 1960 Greensboro, N.C., lunch-counter sit-in; the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; the rise of mass demonstrations in the civ…

Conclusion of the 1987 documentary “Eyes on the Prize.” Included: events of 1963 and '64, when Mississippi became a battleground in the civil-rights movement; the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers; t…

History of in vitro fertilization, traces IVF from an early success with rabbits to the present. Included: controversy and setbacks; the 1978 birth of Louise Joy Brown, the first IVF-born baby; the bi…

The history of yellow fever, and how it was determined that the disease was transmitted by mosquitoes. Included: the work of Carlos Finlay, the Cuban physician who found the link to the insects; how F…

A vibrant retelling of the mania that followed the discovery of gold in San Francisco in 1848. "Next to the Civil War in the 19th century," says historian J.S. Holliday, "no other event had a greater …

One of the first skirmishes of the Cold War, the 1948-49 Soviet blockade of rail and road traffic to and from West Berlin, is recalled. The U.S. and its allies responded with an airlift of food and su…

"The Living Weapon" explores the history of America's biological-weapons program, which began in 1942 with a group that worked parallel to the Manhattan Project, and continued to 1969, when President …

A history of New Orleans, from its origins as a French settlement to its post-Katrina present. Included: archival photos and film footage; and comments from New Orleans historians, residents and schol…

A profile of Sister Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944), a popular Pentecostal evangelist during the 1920s and '30s. Included: comments from biographer Matthew Avery Sutton, author Daniel Mark Epstein,…

Examines the story behind the November 1978 mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, where more than 900 people were led to their deaths by cult leader Jim Jones. Included: comments from Jones' son, …

In 1967, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district became a mecca for young people seeking free music, free love and cosmic oneness, but quickly became home to rampant drug abuse, food shortages and STD…

Historian Sarah Barringer Gordon says of the LDS Church "that from the moment of its birth, Mormons were under a kleig light." This insightful documentary explores the religion's roots, from prophet J…

An examination of the modern-day LDS Church, including its missionary program; how its followers have entered into the American mainstream; Mormon theology and rituals; and how members who either chal…

A profile of Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first treasury secretary and a leading force in the post-Revolutionary War push for a Constitution and strong central government. Included: his role in wr…

Few Americans then or now accept that a lone, inconsequential gunman could bring down a president and alter history. In that breach, a culture of conspiracy has arisen that points to sinister forces a…

In the 1940s Dr. Walter Freeman gained fame for perfecting the lobotomy, then hailed as a miracle cure for the severely mentally ill. But within a few years, lobotomy was labeled one of the most barba…

After a decade-long cry for justice, a new sound is heard in the civil rights movement: the insistent call for power. Malcolm X takes an eloquent nationalism to urban streets as a younger generation o…

A marvel of engineering, architecture, and vision, the story of the Beaux Arts structure on 42nd Street that forever changed midtown Manhattan.

The call for Black Power takes various forms across communities in black America. In Cleveland, Carl Stokes wins election as the first black mayor of a major American city. The Black Panther Party, ar…

A call to pride and a renewed push for unity galvanize black America. World heavyweight champion Cassius Clay challenges America to accept him as Muhammad Ali, a minister of Islam who refuses to fight…

In the 1970s, antidiscrimination legal rights gained in past decades by the civil rights movement are put to the test. In Boston, some whites violently resist a federal court school desegregation orde…

An illiterate mountain man, Kit Carson was fluent in Spanish and five Indian languages; he twice married Native American women, yet led a brutal war against the Navajo. When the West was a mystery to …

In 1886, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show played to over one million people in New York City. It was one of the most elaborate shows on earth. There were cowboys and Indians, sharp shooters, hundreds of …

In 1897, renowned Arctic explorer Robert Peary returned to New York from his latest Greenland expedition. At the request of anthropologist Franz Boas, he brought with him five polar Inuits for study a…

This American Experience tells Whitman's life story, from his working class childhood in Long Island, to his years as a newspaper reporter in Brooklyn when he struggled to support his impoverished fam…

Roberto Clemente is an in-depth look at an exceptional baseball player and committed humanitarian who challenged racial discrimination to become baseball’s first Latino superstar. Featuring interviews…

When George. H.W. Bush left the Oval Office in 1992, rejected after one tumultuous presidential term, his 30-year career in public service came to an abrupt and unexpected end. Despite soaring approva…

George H.W. Bush presents the first in-depth assessment of the 41st president of the United States, drawing upon unparalleled access to figures in Bush's private and public life, to reveal Bush as a p…

A brilliant scientist, Oppenheimer was tasked with the development of the atomic bomb in the top-secret Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico during World War II.

The story of the polio crusade pays tribute to a time when Americans banded together to conquer a terrible disease. The medical breakthrough saved countless lives and had a pervasive impact on America…

On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. Over the next twelve days, as a fractured nation mourned, the largest manhunt ever attempted closed in on his …

From a small-town Texas murder emerged a landmark civil rights case. The little-known story of the Mexican American lawyers who took Hernandez v. Texas to the Supreme Court, challenging Jim Crow-style…

In March of 1621, in what is now southeastern Massachusetts, Massasoit, the leading sachem of the Wampanoag, sat down to negotiate with a ragged group of English colonists. Hungry, dirty, and sick, th…

In the spring of 1805, Tenskwatawa (actor Billy Merasty, Cree First Nation), a Shawnee, fell into a trance so deep that those around him believed he had died. When he finally stirred, the young prophe…

The Cherokee would call it Nu-No-Du-Na-Tlo-Hi-Lu, “The Trail Where They Cried.” On May 26, 1838, federal troops forced thousands of Cherokee from their homes in the Southeastern United States, driving…

In February of 1909, the indomitable Chiricahua Apache medicine man Geronimo lay on his deathbed. He summoned his nephew to his side, whispering, “I should never have surrendered. I should have fought…

On the night of February 27, 1973, fifty-four cars rolled, horns blaring, into a small hamlet on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Within hours, some 200 Oglala Lakota and American Indian Movement (A…

One of the most popular New Deal programs, the Civilian Conservation Corps put three million young men to work in the nation's forests and parks at the height of the Great Depression.

Wyatt Earp has been portrayed in countless movies and television shows by some of Hollywood's greatest actors, including Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, and more recently, Kevin Costner, but these popular…

From International Emmy Award and Peabody Award-winning producer Zvi Dor-Ner (Israel’s Next War, House of Saud) comes The Bombing of Germany, a one-hour film that examines the defining moments of the …

Dolley Madison lived through the two wars that established the U.S., was friends with the first 12 Presidents, and watched America evolve from a struggling young republic to the first modern democracy…

Earth Days looks at the road to April 22, 1970, to the dawn and development of the modern environmental movement through the extraordinary stories of the era’s pioneers — among them Former Secretary o…

What drove a company of American soldiers — ordinary young men from around the country — to commit the worst atrocity in American military history? American Experience focuses on the 1968 My Lai massa…

On April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray shot and killed Dr. Martin Luther King. This is the fateful narrative of the killer and his prey, set against the seething, turbulent forces in American society. Roads…

The 300-year saga of the American whaling industry, from its origins off the coast of New England, through the age of deep ocean whaling, and on to its demise in the decades following the Civil War.

A New Adam explores the origins of Christian religion in America and examines how the New World changed the faiths that the settlers brought with them. A New Eden explores how an unlikely alliance bet…

During the 19th century, the forces of modernity challenged traditional faith and drove a wedge between liberal and conservative believers.

Hour five explores the post-World War II era, when rising evangelist Billy Graham tried to inspire a religious revival that fused faith with patriotism in a Cold War battle with Godless Communism.

Robert E. Lee, the leading Confederate general of the American Civil War, remains a source of fascination and, for some, veneration. Few public figures have ever held a such a firm grip on the Americ…

From PBS and American Experience - In the summer of 1868, paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh boarded a Union Pacific train for a sightseeing excursion through the heart of the newly opened American …

In 1914, the Panama Canal connected the world’s two largest oceans. American ingenuity and innovation had succeeded where the French had failed disastrously, but the U.S. paid a price for victory.

In 1881, 25 men led by Adolphus Greely set sail from Newfoundland to Lady Franklin Bay in the high Arctic, where they planned to collect a wealth of scientific data from a vast area of the world’s sur…

It was the deadliest workplace accident in New York City’s history. A dropped match on the 8th floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory sparked a fire that killed over a hundred innocent people trappe…

The little-known story of the American effort to relieve starvation in the new Soviet Russia in 1921, The Great Famine is a documentary about the worst natural disaster in Europe since the Black Plagu…

In 1969, homosexuality was illegal in almost every state... but that was about to change. The Stonewall riots marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement. When police raided …

The story of the American civil rights movement told through the freedom songs protesters sang on picket lines, in mass meetings, in paddy wagons and in jail cells as they fought for justice and equal…

They called themselves the Freedom Riders, and they managed to bring the president and the entire American public face to face with the challenge of correcting civil-rights inequities that plagued the…

A fascinating look at the myth and the man behind it, who, in just a few short years transformed himself from a skinny orphan boy to the most feared man in the West and an enduring western icon.

A profile of Gen. George Armstrong Custer (1839-76), nicknamed "the boy general" for his Civil War exploits, who died with many other members of the 7th Cavalry while battling the Cheyenne and Lakota …

Part 1 of a two-part profile of former president Bill Clinton charts his path from Hope, Ark., to Washington, D.C., ending midway through his first term when the GOP, led by Newt Gingrich, took contro…

The conclusion of the Bill Clinton biography recalls the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which led to Clinton becoming the second U.S. president to be impeached. It also details his face-off over the federal…

The first documentary to deeply penetrate and explore this profoundly attention-averse group, The Amish answers many questions Americans have about this insistently insular religious community, whose …

Featuring the men and women who lived and worked at Grand Coulee in the wake of the Great Depression and the Native people whose lives were changed alongside historians and engineers, this film explor…

Despite Jesse Owens' remarkable victories in the face of Nazi racism at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the athlete struggled to find a place for himself in a United States that was still wrestling to overc…

With the coming of the Civil War, and the staggering casualties it ushered in, death entered the experience of the American people as it never had before -- permanently altering the character of the r…

The story of how abolitionist allies William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown and Angelina Grimke turned a despised fringe movement against chattel slavery into a …

See how the activities of the five principals intersect and affect the anti-slavery movement.

Examine the forces leading to war and to the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.

An absorbing life story of a farm boy who rose from obscurity to become the most influential American innovator of the 20th century, Henry Ford offers an incisive look at the birth of the American aut…

Led by physicist Robert Noyce, Fairchild Semiconductor began as a start-up company whose radical innovations would help make the United States a leader in both space exploration and the personal compu…

A broadcast that struck fear into an already anxious nation, Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast was the most famous alien invasion that never happened.

A two-part profile of John F. Kennedy begins with his early years, detailing the health challenges he faced; his heroism after his PT boat was hit by an enemy destroyer during World War II; his first …

Conclusion. John F. Kennedy's White House years, including the Bay of Pigs fiasco; Cuban Missile Crisis; handling of civil rights; and decision to travel to Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, to shore up suppor…

The story of New York City's first medical examiner, Charles Norris (1867-1935), and his chief toxicologist, Alexander Gettler (1883-1968), who pioneered the use of forensic science to explain violent…

Recalling 1964, a pivotal year in U.S. history. While the Beatles captured the imaginations of the nation's youth, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, unveiled his vision of a "Gr…

The Amish practice of shunning those who leave their faith is explored through the experiences of individuals who have left their communities. Also: faithful Amish men and women share the heartbreak t…

The story of outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, whose turn-of-the-century exploits made headlines, led them to be pursued by Pinkerton detectives and inspired the popular 1969 film starring P…

The story of New York's Pennsylvania Station, which opened to the public in 1910. One of the greatest architectural and engineering achievements of its time, it covered nearly eight acres and required…

Recalling the summer of 1964 in Mississippi, when student volunteers from around the country joined local activists in an effort to register to vote as many African-Americans as possible. (Due to inti…

In 1959, at the very height of the Cold War, with American schoolchildren practicing duck-and-cover drills, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, the man who Americans feared could incinerate them in a rai…

Robert Ripley's obsession with the odd and keen eye for the curious made him one of the most successful men in America during the Great Depression. Over three decades, his Believe It or Not! franchise…

The rise of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina during the 1960s is recalled. In 1963, Bob Jones Sr. started the state's chapter for the racist organization, and grew its membership to more than 10,000…

EDISON explores the complex alchemy that accounts for the enduring celebrity of America's most famous inventor, offering new perspectives on the man and his milieu, and illuminating not only the true …

In the summer of 1910, hundreds of wildfires raged across the Northern Rockies. By the time it was all over, more than three million acres had burned and at least 78 firefighters were dead. It was the…

By the dawn of the 19th century, the most deadly killer in human history, tuberculosis, had killed one in seven of all the people who had ever lived. Throughout the 1800s, the disease struck America w…

The North Vietnamese Army was nearing Saigon and the South Vietnamese resistance was at a low. Nearly 5,000 Americans still needed to remove from South Vietnam, but their South Vietnamese allies, co-w…

First responders, journalists, shop owners, those inside the pressure-packed control center of Con Edison on West End Avenue, and other New Yorkers tell about what happened when the lights went out on…

In 1966, the year Walt Disney died, 240 million people saw a Disney movie, 100 million tuned in to a Disney television program, 80 million bought Disney merchandise, and close to seven million visited…

In 1966, the year Walt Disney died, 240 million people saw a Disney movie, 100 million tuned in to a Disney television program, 80 million bought Disney merchandise, and close to seven million visited…

When William Morgan was executed outside a Havana prison on March 11, 1961, his strange story seemed to vanish from the popular imagination as quickly as it had appeared; it was lost in the classified…

The challenges the Pilgrims faced in making new lives for themselves still resonate almost 400 years later: the tensions of faith and freedom in American society, the separation of Church and State, a…

Though their exploits were romanticized, the Barrow gang was believed responsible for at least 23 murders, including two policemen, as well as numerous robberies and kidnappings. Discover the true sto…

The story of small people going up against very big forces for a better nation. In the first two decades of the 20th century, coal miners and coal companies in West Virginia clashed in a series of bru…

The story of James Garfield, one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president, and his assassination by a deluded madman named Charles Guiteau. The story follows Garfield's unprecedented rise …

The shocking story of Richard Leopold and Nathan Loeb, two wealthy college students who murdered a 14-year-old boy in 1924 to prove they were smart enough to get away with it.

In the 1950s and early '60s, a small band of high-altitude pioneers exposed themselves to the extreme forces of the space age long before NASA's acclaimed Mercury 7 would make headlines. Though largel…

The story of nine working-class young men from the University of Washington who took the rowing world and America by storm when they captured the gold medal at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Their …

Meet Nikola Tesla, the genius engineer and tireless inventor whose technology revolutionized the electrical age of the 20th century. Although eclipsed in fame by Edison and Marconi, it was Tesla's vis…

View the intense battle in intimate detail in this vivid narrative of combat and survival in the first major military clash of the Cold War.

An account of an incident at a Titan II missile complex in Damascus, Ark., in 1980 that almost caused the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying a nuclear warhead 600 times more powerful than the b…

She set out to save a species...us. An intimate portrait of the woman whose groundbreaking books revolutionized our relationship to the natural world.

The dramatic story of the country's first subway.

On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh, a former soldier deeply influenced by literature and ideas of the radical right, killed 168, and injured 675 others.

A riveting account of the event that helped give rise to the modern American militia movement.

Part 1 of 3. President Woodrow Wilson vowed to keep the U.S. out of World War I after hostilities erupted in Europe in August 1914. It was a promise he kept until 1917, when the Germans resumed "unr…

Part 2 of 3. America's entry into World War I is recalled, including the breathtaking speed of mobilization and the profound transformations required for America to play a central role in the conflic…

Part 3 of 3. In the fall of 1918: a major American offensive that could bring a swift end to the war, a lost U.S. battalion surrounded by German forces, a deadly flu epidemic on the homefront.

The remarkable story of President Theodore Roosevelt’s journey with legendary Brazilian explorer Candido Rondon into the heart of the South American rainforest to chart an unexplored tributary of the …

In the fall of 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his country’s most valuable military secret — a revolutionary radar component — to a Wall Street tycoon, Alfred Lee Loomis. Usin…

Meet the titans and barons of the glittering late 19th century, whose materialistic extravagance contrasted harshly with the poverty of the struggling workers who challenged them. The vast disparities…

Explore the story behind the first terrorist attack in the U.S., a mostly-forgotten 1920 bombing in the nation’s financial center that left 38 dead – a crime that remains unsolved today.

In the summer 1931, Honolulu's tropical tranquility was shattered when a young Navy wife made a drastic allegation of rape against five nonwhite islanders. What unfolded in the following days and week…

The origin, history and impact of the 1882 law that made it illegal for Chinese workers to come to America and for Chinese nationals already there to become U.S. citizens.

Explore the early days of this popular, influential and distinctly American form of entertainment during an era when master showmen P.T. Barnum, James Bailey and the Ringling Brothers transformed the …

Revisit the heyday of this distinctly American form of entertainment when former rivals Barnum, Bailey and the Ringling Brothers joined forces to present the “greatest show on earth” in big cities and…

The Eugenics Crusade tells the story of the unlikely –– and largely unknown –– campaign to breed a “better” American race, tracing the rise of the movement that turned the fledgling science of heredit…

The history of the Everglades is a dramatic yet little known story of humanity’s attempt to conquer nature. The Swamp, told through the lives of a handful of colorful and resolute characters, explores…

In 1969 off the California coast, a US Navy crane carefully lowered a massive tubular structure into the waters. It was an audacious feat of engineering — a pressurized underwater habitat, designed fo…

On 4 October 1957, Soviet scientists launched Sputnik 1 - a beach ball-sized, radio-transmitting aluminium alloy sphere - into orbit. The satellite caused a sensation. Amid Cold War tensions, the Sovi…

What exactly was it going to take for America to beat the Soviets to the moon? Cold War tensions persisted, as rumours circulated that the Soviets were preparing to send an unmanned spacecraft to the …

After the immediate celebration of 1968’s successful Apollo 8 mission, underlying questions about the space programme emerged with new intensity as politicized young Americans challenged the nation’s …

In August, 1969, half a million people from all walks of life and every corner of the country converged on a small dairy farm in upstate New York. They came to hear the concert of their lives, but mos…

Anderson Hatfield and Randolph McCoy, the patriarchs of the legendary feud, were entrepreneurs seeking to climb up from hardship after fierce economic competition and rapid technological change had tu…

McCarthy chronicles the rise and fall of Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator whose zealous anti-communist crusade would test the limits of American decency and democracy.

The story of government chemist Dr. Harvey Wiley who, determined to banish these dangerous substances from dinner tables, took on the powerful food manufacturers and their allies.

Explore the life of 1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, who tried to solve world hunger. He rescued India from a severe famine and led the "Green Revolution," estimated to have saved one bil…

The latest in our award-winning series of presidential biographies, this film looks at the life and presidency of George W. Bush, from his unorthodox road to the presidency to the terrorist attacks of…

George W. Bush, part two continues through Bush’s second term, as the president confronts the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina and the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Mr. Tornado is the remarkable story of Ted Fujita, whose groundbreaking work in research and applied science saved thousands of lives and helped Americans prepare for and respond to dangerous weather …

One hundred years after the passage of the 19th Amendment, The Vote tells the dramatic culmination story of the hard-fought campaign waged by American women for the right to vote, a transformative cul…

Part Two examines the mounting dispute over strategy and tactics, and reveals how the pervasive racism of the time, particularly in the South, impacted women's fight for the vote.

Based on the book The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies, The Codebreaker reveals the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith F…