Combining dramatic storytelling and historical scholarship, our history documentaries explore the remarkable people and epic events that have shaped the world. The AMERICAN EXPERIENCE series produced by WGBH, whose unsurpassed quality and accuracy have been acknowledged by numerous awards and widespread critical acclaim, have received Oscar nominations, Emmys, duPont-Columbia and Sundance Film Festival awards, among numerous others.
Although images of wars and other violent events of this century are most familiar to us, nonviolent resistance has been equally important, toppling dictators, foiling military invaders and overcoming oppression everywhere... SEE MORE >>
This epic, visually sweeping series will document the world that we have
created and explore what humankind’s building legacy reveals about our
ever-evolving priorities, aspirations, most basic needs, and deep-seated... SEE MORE >>
On May 2, 1976, twenty-four black men and six white women dressed in blue shirts, black berets, and black leather jackets ascended the steps of the capital building in Sacramento, California. Across the street, the press, ... SEE MORE >>
On January 1, 1863, when abolitionist leaders Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison received word that the Emancipation Proclamation had declared 3 million enslaved African Americans “forever free,” it was the ... SEE MORE >>
In the early weeks of 1968, geologists calculated that as much as ten billion barrels of oil lay below the frozen tundra of Prudhoe Bay, which was the largest oil find in North America. The pipeline built to bring that oi... SEE MORE >>
In four groundbreaking hours, America Revealed leaps outside the mundane to take viewers on a soaring journey above the great American landscape, revealing the country as it has never been seen before. America Revealed har... SEE MORE >>
The Amish first migrated to the United States more than 200 years ago and created a community built on the belief that worldliness not only prevents closeness to God, but also introduces influences that are destructive to ... SEE MORE >>
During World War I, the Ottoman Empire carried out one of the largest genocides in the world's history, killing huge portions of its minority Armenian population. In the end, over one million Armenians had been put to deat... SEE MORE >>
At the age of 19, 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 mentally ill, she had herself com... SEE MORE >>
On March 4, 1865, at the United States Capitol, a crowd of fifty thousand listened as President Abraham Lincoln delivered his classic second inaugural address, urging charity and forgiveness to a nation in the final throes... SEE MORE >>
Millions remember the countdowns, launchings, splashdowns and parades as the US raced the USSR to the Moon in the 1960s. Few know that both superpowers ran parallel covert space programs to launch military astronauts on sp... SEE MORE >>
Known inaccurately to the general public as "Project Jennifer," Azorian was the CIA's audacious attempt to recover the wreck of the Soviet ballistic missile submarine "K-129", by a specially designed and purpose-built salv... SEE MORE >>
Ken Burns' epic documentary miniseries. Like Burns's previous masterpiece (THE CIVIL WAR), this film is more than just the history of baseball. It is a reflection of the American experience. Contained in its nine colorful ... SEE MORE >>
In late 1941, tens of thousands of American and Filipino soldiers fought a desperate battle to defend the Bataan peninsula in the Philippines from the Japanese. When they lost, they were marched to prison camps in swelteri... SEE MORE >>
In 1960, a young boxer named Cassius Clay arrived in Miami, determined to become world heavyweight champion. In the end, he became something more: a legend. Combining rarely seen footage with interviews of those who were ... SEE MORE >>
BIBLE'S BURIED SERCETS, a landmark two-hour NOVA special, breaks exciting new ground in investigating the origins of the ancient Israelites, their faith in a single all-powerful God, and the creation of the Bible. A powerf... SEE MORE >>
One of America's most beloved folk heroes, Billy the Kid became a legend in his own time, yet remains an enigma to this day. Gunned down at the age of 21, his legend arose amidst the swiftly vanishing frontier and then, se... SEE MORE >>
Latin America is often associated with music, monuments and sun, but each of the six countries featured in Black in Latin America including, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico and Peru, has a secret histo... SEE MORE >>
The United States entered World War II with a new weapon: a bomber fleet that it believed would decide battles from a distance, without the face-to-face slaughter of a land war. The United States also entered the war as an... SEE MORE >>
The story of the expedition and subsequent analysis of the only intact skeleton of a thylacoleo -- the marsupial lion -- ever found. The adventure to extract the fossil bones and the project to discover what they reveal ov... SEE MORE >>
Extensive research in the US and Europe brings life to this amazing story of moral courage and the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the young German theologian who offered one of the first clear voices of resistance to Adolf H... SEE MORE >>
When David Vetter died at the age of 12, he was already world famous: the boy in the plastic bubble. Mythologized as the plucky, handsome child who had defied the odds, his life story is in fact even more dramatic. It is a... SEE MORE >>
This one-hour documentary reveals the inside story of how Milosevic, Europe's last dictator, was defeated, not in smoke and flames, but in a courageous and risky campaign of political defiance and nonviolent action that be... SEE MORE >>
Ken Burns's first film traces the transformation of the Bridge from a spectacular and heroic engineering feat to a symbol in American culture of strength, vitality, ingenuity and promise. The first part recounts the dramat... SEE MORE >>
Two and a half millennia ago, a new religion was born in northern India, generated from the ideas of a single man, the Buddha, a mysterious Indian sage who famously gained enlightenment while he sat under a large, shapely ... SEE MORE >>
William "Buffalo Bill" Cody's legendary exploits helped create the myth of the American West that still endures today. Born in an Iowa log cabin in 1846, he fought Indians, worked as a Pony Express rider, and earned his ni... SEE MORE >>
In May 1942, across the rugged sub-Arctic wilderness of Alaska, British Columbia, and Yukon Territory, thousands of American soldiers began one of the biggest and most difficult construction projects ever undertaken. For e... SEE MORE >>
Official Selection, Cannes Film Festival 2012 New York Film Critics Circle Best Non-Fiction Film (Documentary) Official Selection: Telluride Film Festival 2012 Official Selection: Toronto International Film Festival 2012 Speci... SEE MORE >>
When Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, one of his earliest actions was to ban Jews from working in that country's storied film industry. Men and women who had created landmarks of movie history fled their ... SEE MORE >>
Five years in production, this epic presentation of America's bloodiest conflict has received widespread critical praise from reviewers and historians alike as a landmark in documentary filmma... SEE MORE >>
In March 1933, within weeks of his inauguration, President Franklin Roosevelt sent legislation to Congress aimed at providing relief for the one out of every four American workers who were unemployed. He proposed a Civilia... SEE MORE >>
From draft dodging to the Dayton Accords, from Monica Lewinsky to a balanced budget, the presidency of William Jefferson Clinton veered between sordid scandal and grand achievement. In Clinton, the latest installment in th... SEE MORE >>
In this unusually moving portrait of the United States Congress, Ken Burns explores the history and promise of one of the country's most important and least understood institutions in a lively special, narrated by David Mc... SEE MORE >>
This is a definitive look back at how a handful of pioneers deciphered the intricate system of hieroglyphs developed by the Maya. One of the greatest detective stories in all of archaeology, it has never been told in depth... SEE MORE >>
In 1929, while the US stock market was rising, there were few critics. In America, it was a "New Era" when everyone could get rich. But it was a small group of bankers, brokers and speculators who by manipulating the stock... SEE MORE >>
In 1954 during the height of McCarthyism and the Cold War, the controversial labor film Salt of the Earth was made despite numerous attempts by the film industry and the US government to prevent its production. A CRIME TO ... SEE MORE >>
Examines the colorful characters and historic events surrounding this 100-year-old war and its relevance to the twentieth century. When a declining Spain, beset by rebellion abroad, fell to American expansionism, the Unite... SEE MORE >>
On June 26, 1876, near the Little Bighorn River in the eastern Montana Territory, Gen. George Armstrong Custer ordered his soldiers to drive back a large army of Lakota and Cheyenne Indians. The battle pitted two larger-th... SEE MORE >>
An Emmy Award-winning documentary about those who build nuclear weapons, this extremely moving work concentrates on the life story of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in producing the first atomic bomb. A stron... SEE MORE >>
In the middle of the 19th century, the United States embarked on a new relationship with death. The American Civil War, fought between 1861 and 1865, was by far the bloodiest in the nation's history, presaging the slaughte... SEE MORE >>
In 1870, America's untamed West was dry, sparsely vegetated, and constantly eroding. But beneath the surface lay a treasure unlike any in the world: the bones of countless prehistoric creatures. For the emerging field of A... SEE MORE >>
The Dust Bowl chronicles the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, in which the frenzied wheat boom of the "Great Plow-Up," followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s nearly swept away the breadba... SEE MORE >>
Earth Days is a feature-length documentary about the origins of the modern environmental movement, told through the eyes of nine Americans who were inspired to act on what they believed was the most important challenge fac... SEE MORE >>
It was the only successful slave insurrection in history. It used the ideas of the French Revolutionary to create the world's first Black republic. It elevated a Black general, Toussaint Louverture, to such international ... SEE MORE >>
The story of three men of genius, vision, determination and fascinating complexity, whose lives were stranger and more dramatic than anything they created. Narrated by Jason Robards, the program follows the successes, fail... SEE MORE >>
Within the long history of civilization are great eras of struggle, triumph, and loss. These periods are reflective of the best and worst of humanity: explosive creativity, ultimate depravity, the use and abuse of power a... SEE MORE >>
Turning to the latest tools of genealogy and genetics, Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. unravels the American tapestry by exploring the family histories of 12 renowned Americans. He follows the threads of his guests'... SEE MORE >>
On January 3, 1959 a column of victorious young rebels advanced along Cuba's main highway towards Havana. At the head of the column rode 33-year-old Fidel Castro Ruz, the hope of a people. Over the next 40 years, by the fo... SEE MORE >>
This 10-part series, with renowned cultural critic and Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., journeys deep into the ancestry of a group of remarkable individuals and provides new understanding of personal identity and Am... SEE MORE >>
FLYING THE SECRET SKY: THE STORY OF RAF FERRY COMMAND tells a story of passionate risk-taking, of young men braving dangerous flights in primitive aircraft. These "cowboys of the air" are forgotten heroes of the war, who ... SEE MORE >>
The story of a shocking act of forgiveness by Eva Kor, an Auschwitz survivor and victim of Nazi experiments on twins, and the passionate opposition that her mercy has provoked, especially from other Auschwitz survivors. A ... SEE MORE >>
Imagine a moment from the age of dinosaurs frozen in time: primitive birds, bees, insects, early mammals, the first known flowering plants, and of course, dinosaurs, all exquisitely preserved in fine-grained fossils from C... SEE MORE >>
This special explores the life of Jesus and the movement he started, challenging familiar assumptions and conventional notions about the origins of Christianity. Drawing upon new and sometimes controversial historical evid... SEE MORE >>
Four times governor of Alabama, four times a candidate for president, he was feared as a racist demagogue and admired as a politician who spoke his mind. A lightening rod for controversy, Wallace both reflected and provoke... SEE MORE >>
The story of a tragic collision of two civilizations, each with dramatically different views of both the world and of each other. In 1886, the US government mobilized 5,000 men to capture this legendary Apache who was beli... SEE MORE >>
During World War II, a hand-picked group of American GI’s undertook a bizarre mission: create a traveling road show of deception on the battlefi elds of Europe, with the Nazi German Army as their audience. The U.S. 23rd ... SEE MORE >>
In the history of America, religion has always mattered, and America's story cannot be fully understood without understanding its religious history. For the first time on television, this six-hour PBS documentary series w... SEE MORE >>
The Gold Rush of 1848 was a remarkably international event; in short order, gold-seekers from Oregon and the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), Mexico, Chile, England, France, Australia, Ireland, and China migrated to California a... SEE MORE >>
On May 27, 1937, 200,000 people thronged to the newly-completed Golden Gate bridge and walked, climbed, skated or cycled across. San Francisco's jubilance was unrestrained. It took a hustler and self-promoter, a man who ha... SEE MORE >>
On the morning of January 8, 1902, a southbound commuter train traveling through a smoky, congested tunnel in New York City's Grand Central Depot slammed into the rear of another train, instantly killing seventeen people, ... SEE MORE >>
When the Grand Coulee Dam was being built during the depths of the Great Depression, everything about it--the generators, the powerhouses, the pumps, the turbines, the conveyor belts, the cofferdams, not to mention the con... SEE MORE >>
When a devastating famine descended on Soviet Russia in 1921, the United States responded with a massive two-year relief campaign that battled starvation and disease, and saved millions of lives. By summer 1922, American k... SEE MORE >>
For over two hundred years, yellow fever killed an estimated 100,000 people. In June 1900, the US Army led a medical team to Cuba on a mission to investigate the disease and began testing the radical theories of Cuban doct... SEE MORE >>
The terrible chain of events began at 5:12 am April 18, 1906 when an earthquake hit San Francisco with the force of approximately 12,000 times the power of the atom bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima some 40 years lat... SEE MORE >>
In 1881, twenty-five men led by Lieutenant Adolphus Greely sailed from
the harbor of St. John's, Newfoundland. Their destination was Lady
Franklin Bay in the high Arctic, where they planned to collect a wealth
of sci... SEE MORE >>
Based on the newest book by author Mark Bowden (author of Blackhawk Down and Killing Pablo), this series looks back at the seminal event in the history of Western relations with Iran: the hostage crisis of 1979-81. Through... SEE MORE >>
His car transformed the lives of millions, and re-drew the grid of the United States and much of the world. His assembly line transformed the character of modern industry, and his Five Dollar Day laid the foundation for Am... SEE MORE >>
For more than 30 years it would be known as "the blackest day in aviation history." In September 1970, members of the militant Palestinian group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), hijacked five comm... SEE MORE >>
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 desperate for work to a remot... SEE MORE >>
This film tells the hilarious story of the first transcontinental automobile trip, an adventure undertaken in 1903 by Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson. Traveling in a 20-horsepower 1903 Winton touring car with a driving partner ... SEE MORE >>
In 1912, Harry Houdini was lowered into the East River in a packing crate wrapped in chains. The crowd of spectators gasped; reporters pulled out their stop watches. Houdini was out in 57 seconds. The resulting media blitz... SEE MORE >>
He was a populist hero and a corrupt demagogue, hailed as a champion of the poor and reviled as a dictator. Louisiana's Huey Long built his remarkable career as Governor and U.S. Senator on a platform of social reform and ... SEE MORE >>
Oil and Sand was an extravagant film made by members of the Egyptian royal family and a few friends and relatives in 1952 about a coup d'état, shot just weeks before the royals were overthrown in a real coup. The complete... SEE MORE >>
Many people have big dreams, but only a few bold adventurers live them. Denis Belliveau and Francis O'Donnell took a wild idea--retrace Marco Polo's entire 25,000-mile, land-and-sea route from Venice to China and back--and... SEE MORE >>
In September of 1918, soldiers at an army base near Boston suddenly began to die. The cause of death was identified as influenza, but it was unlike any strain ever seen. As the killer virus spread across the country, hospi... SEE MORE >>
For two centuries, American whale oil lit the world--illuminating and powering the start of the industrial revolution, and laying the groundwork for a truly global economy. From its stunning rise as an economic force in th... SEE MORE >>
The tragic yet inspirational story of the "last wild Indian in North America". In 1911, Ishi, the last Yahi Indian, left his forest homeland in Northern California and walked out into the white man's world, only to be jail... SEE MORE >>
The Italian Americans examines the distinctive qualities of one immigrant group's experience, and how over time these qualities have shaped and challenged America. Moving chronologically through history from the mid 19th c... SEE MORE >>
The battle of Iwo Jima started on February 19, 1945 with the invasion of a Japanese island stronghold in the north Pacific. What had been envisioned as a five-day "walk-over" became a 36 day descent into hell for 70,000 US... SEE MORE >>
Scheduled for broadcast on the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s death, this probing biography provides a fresh look at an enigmatic man, who remains one of the nation’s most beloved and mourned leaders. ... SEE MORE >>
This series presents the history of America's greatest original art form. More than music history, the film raises questions central to twentieth century life, both in America and throughout the world: about race and class... SEE MORE >>
Over forty centuries ago, a small city rose in the hills some 35 miles inland from the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean. It was not a place of riches. It was not the capital of a powerful kingdom. It was militarily and ... SEE MORE >>
The story of Jesse James remains one of America's most cherished myths...and one of its most wrong-headed. Jesse James, so the legend goes, was a Western outlaw, though, in fact, he never went west. He was America's Robin ... SEE MORE >>
When 22-year-old Jesse Owens captured four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, he became one of the world's most celebrated athletes. An African-American, he was a living repudiation of Hitler's credo of Aryan... SEE MORE >>
THE JEWISH AMERICANS, an extraordinary three-part documentary series written and directed by the Emmy Award-winning filmmaker David Grubin, examines the struggle of a tiny minority to make its way into the American mainstr... SEE MORE >>
Spanning millennia, this history of the Jewish people explores how a small group who started as desert nomads overcame countless obstacles to survive to the present day. From slavery to the loss of their temple; from exile... SEE MORE >>
This is the story of one of the most devastating disasters in American history. The film chronicles the events leading up to and following the moment on May 31, 1889 when a private dam burst, unleashing 200 million tons of... SEE MORE >>
NOVA dives beneath the waters of Pearl Harbor to trace provocative new clues to one of the most tragic events of World War II--the sinking of the USS Arizona. More than 1,000 crew members perished in the greatest single lo... SEE MORE >>
Alfred Kinsey was a little-known biologist at Indiana University when, in the 1940s, he began compiling exhaustive data from tens of thousands of interviews about the sexual practices of men and women. The results of that ... SEE MORE >>
His exploits on the American frontier inspired dozens of dime novels, but the stories told in these wildly popular books belie the complexities of the real Kit Carson, whose life embodies the contradictions of the American... SEE MORE >>
Lafayette: The Lost Hero tells the story of the Marquis De Lafayette and his quest to bring democracy to America and France, through the eyes of Sabine Renault Sabloniere, a 21st century descendant. The film traces the lif... SEE MORE >>
Because of the selfless acts of his rescuers in the Belgian Resistance, downed P-47 pilot Bill Grosvenor stayed one step ahead of the Gestapo for seven months in 1943 and 1944 until his eventual arrest and incarceration in... SEE MORE >>
What is a chemical weapon? And who should be held accountable in the wake of what is arguably the largest chemical warfare operation in American history? A former US ambassador to Vietnam referred to Agent Orange as "the l... SEE MORE >>
The Battle of Little Big Horn known as "Custer's Last Stand" has been one of the most frequently depicted moments in American history: and one of the least understood, still shrouded in myth. The battle which left no white... SEE MORE >>
Latino Americans, a landmark three-part, six-hour
documentary series,
is the first major documentary series for television to chronicle the rich and
varied history and experiences of Latinos, who have helped shape the... SEE MORE >>
An intensely personal drama, the story of T.E. Lawrence is a story of courage and guilt, betrayal and triumph. The British Army Officer's role in the unification of the Arab tribes against the Turks during WWI endeared him... SEE MORE >>
For the 50th anniversary of the start of the McCarthy era, this film focuses on the many victims of the House Un-American Activities Committee, the blacklist period and the effects that last to this day. Includes powerful ... SEE MORE >>
This documentary tells the dramatic story of the momentous journey that began in 1804, when Lewis and Clark, headed up the Missouri River on what would be the United States' first official exploration into unknown spaces. ... SEE MORE >>
From the director/producer of the acclaimed Seven Wonders of the Muslim World, The Life Of Muhammad charts the extraordinary story of a man who, in little more than 20 years, changed the world forever. In a journey that is... SEE MORE >>
Shortly after the US entered World War II, an alarming intelligence report stated that Germany and Japan were developing biological weapons for potential offensive use. In response, the US and its allies rushed to develop ... SEE MORE >>
In the early decades of the 20th century, before the development of psychiatric medications, there were few effective treatments for mental illness. For most patients, the last stop in their anguished journey was an overcr... SEE MORE >>
Christopher Columbus changed the world. Though his acts were deliberate, the outcome was unintended. His goal was to grow rich and find a new way to the Far East by sailing West, though he ended up achieving much more. ... SEE MORE >>
MAKE 'EM LAUGH: THE FUNNY BUSINESS OF AMERICA is a series of six one-hour episodes chronicling over 100 years of the funniest moments in the history of entertainment. The series features the most popular routines, the mos... SEE MORE >>
Review the story of how women have helped shape America over the last 50
years through one of the most sweeping social revolutions in our
country’s history, in pursuit of their rights to a full and fair share
of po... SEE MORE >>
Political philosopher and visionary, husband and father, dynamic orator and militant minister. In his lifetime, Malcolm X was many men. Born Malcolm Little, he later became "Detroit Red" and "New York Red" -- a hustler, dr... SEE MORE >>
He was both a visionary and a manipulator, a brilliant orator and a pompous autocrat. In just ten years following his emigration in 1917 as a laborer to the United States from Jamaica, Marcus Garvey rose to lead the Univer... SEE MORE >>
Her name has become synonymous with the French monarchy and all its excesses, but there is more to the story of Marie Antoinette than the simplistic tale of how a frivolous sovereign helped provoke the uprising that became... SEE MORE >>
A film by Ken Burns, profiling of the remarkable life and times of America's greatest writer, Samuel Clemens, known and beloved to the world as Mark Twain. It follows his rise from a hardscrabble youth in Missouri, his wan... SEE MORE >>
THE MEDAL OF HONOR traces the history of America's highest award for valor in combat through powerful stories of those who have received this honor and asks fundamental questions about what it means to have the courage of ... SEE MORE >>
In 1925, a biology teacher named John Scopes was arrested for teaching evolution in defiance of Tennessee state law. His trial became an epic event of the twentieth century, a debate over free speech that spiraled into an ... SEE MORE >>
Mormons have always had a strange hold on the American imagination as polygamists and pioneer heroes, subversives and super patriots, hard workers and possessors of dark secrets. Yet though Mormons have been persecuted mor... SEE MORE >>
High on a granite cliff in South Dakota's Black Hills tower the huge carved faces of four American presidents. Together they constitute the world's largest sculpture. Who possessed the audacity to create such a gargantuan ... SEE MORE >>
In August 1955, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago whistled at a white woman in a grocery store in Money, Mississippi. Emmett Till didn't understand that he had broken the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South. Three days... SEE MORE >>
Outstanding Directing for Nonfiction Programming, THE EMMY AWARD
The words "My Lai" are seared into our memories of the Vietnam War, but few know what really happened in the small Vietnamese village on March 16, 1968. Now,... SEE MORE >>
Most of us best know the chicken from our dinner plates: whether as thigh, wing, or drumstick. We barely pause a moment to consider the bird's many virtues. This one-hour film by Mark Lewis expands the frontiers of popula... SEE MORE >>
In the wake of hurricane Katrina, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE launches a provocative history of the city that lies at the heart of the American experiment. In the first and only true melting pot in North America, slaves and free ... SEE MORE >>
There is no place in the world like New York. The dark beauty and inimitable power of the city have for generations stirred men and women to the bottom of their souls, seeming the very embodiment of all ambition, all aspir... SEE MORE >>
NOT FOR OURSELVES ALONE is a dual biography of the two women who almost single-handedly created and spear-headed the women's rights movement in America from 1848 until 1906. Through their lives and work, the film details t... SEE MORE >>
This is the story of a group of young athletes from Sierra Leone, one of the poorest countries on earth, as they struggle to achieve their dream of competing at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. The film follows Sanusi, a ... SEE MORE >>
The assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, TX marked the end of an era and the beginning of another. The story of those six seconds in Dealy Plaza has been retold time and again, an ongoing fascination fed in large ... SEE MORE >>
The Panama Canal was the costliest undertaking in human history. It literally required moving mountains, in one of the most challenging environments on earth, breaking the back of the great range that connects North and So... SEE MORE >>
A storm of Modernism swept through the art worlds of the West in the early decades of the twentieth century, uprooting centuries of tradition in the visual arts, music, literature, dance, theater, and beyond. The epicenter... SEE MORE >>
On May 13, 1607, three English sailing vessels dropped anchor beside a small island fringed by swamps in the James River, Virginia. On board were 104 colonists who established the first successful English settlement in the... SEE MORE >>
It was the largest public health experiment in American history: a crusade that eradicated one of the twentieth century's most dreaded diseases. The polio epidemic terrified Americans for decades, affecting thousands of c... SEE MORE >>
Directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, Prohibition tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed.
The culmination of nearly a century of a... SEE MORE >>
For the nineteenth century, the world beneath the sea played much the same role that "outer space" has played for the twentieth. Proteus uses the undersea world as the locus for a meditation on the troubled intersection of... SEE MORE >>
This probing and perceptive biography reassesses the remarkable and tragic life of the third Kennedy son. The film chronicles the pivotal role RFK played in many of the major events of the 1960s -- the Cuban Missile Crisis... SEE MORE >>
In 1942, President Roosevelt signed an order that would eventually uproot 120,000 people of Japanese descent -- nearly two-thirds of them American-born -- from the western states of the US, incarcerating them until the end... SEE MORE >>
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 recently dropped on Japan. A world away, on the frozen steppes of Siberi... SEE MORE >>
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 articles because they were a... SEE MORE >>
This powerful documentary tells the epic story of the systematic theft, deliberate destruction and miraculous survival of Europe's art treasures during the Third Reich and the Second World War. For twelve long years, the N... SEE MORE >>
In the early 1830s, Texas was about to explode. Although under Mexican rule, the region was home to more than 20,000 US settlers agitated by what they saw as restrictive Mexican policies. Mexican officials were prepared to... SEE MORE >>
For 45 centuries, the Great Sphinx has cast its enigmatic gaze over Egypt's Giza plateau. The biggest and oldest statue in a land of colossal ancient monuments, its scale is staggering: the mighty head towers as tall as th... SEE MORE >>
In its extraordinarily tender account of the lives of Depression-era teenage freight-train riders, Riding the Rails offers a visionary perspective on the presumed romanticism of the road and cautionary legacy of the Great ... SEE MORE >>
This film tells the story of an assassin, James Earl Ray, his target, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the seething, turbulent forces in American society that led these two men to their violent and tragic collision in Memp... SEE MORE >>
He is celebrated by handsome equestrian statues in countless cities and towns across the American South, and by no less than five postage stamps issued by the government he fought against during the four bloodiest years in... SEE MORE >>
On New Year's Eve 1972, Roberto Clemente, a baseball player for the Pittsburgh Pirates, boarded a DC-7 loaded with relief supplies for earthquake victims in Managua, Nicaragua. Shortly after takeoff the plane crashed into ... SEE MORE >>
The Roosevelts will present Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt as they have never been portrayed on-screen before, as the most prominent members of the most important family in our history. For nineteen of the first ... SEE MORE >>
US Library of Congress 100 American films preserved in the National Film Register. Salt of the Earth was produced by a small group of Hollywood Communists working outside of the studio system. The film tells of a strike by... SEE MORE >>
Despite his boxy build, stumpy legs, straggly tail, and ungainly gait, Seabiscuit was one of the most remarkable thoroughbred racehorses in history. His fabulously wealthy owner Charles Howard, his famously silent and stub... SEE MORE >>
A hundred years ago, the world of the British manor house was at its height. It was a world of luxury and privilege that has provided a majestic backdrop to a range of movies and costume dramas to this day. But what was re... SEE MORE >>
The enormous popularity of period costume dramas
set in the English countryside has led to huge interest in the real-life
stories of the amazing homes that dot the landscape and often serve as the
settings for these lus... SEE MORE >>
A vivid and bittersweet portrait of the 200-year old history of the Shakers, whose influence was far out of proportion to the numbers of its members. The film is a beautifully crafted combination of rare archive material, ... SEE MORE >>
THE SEIGE is a powerful documentary on the infamous 1996 siege in Lima. The Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), lead by Nestor Cerpa, storms a party at the Japanese Ambassador's residence, taking hundreds of hosta... SEE MORE >>
In 1957, decades before Steve Jobs dreamed up Apple or Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, a group of eight brilliant young men defected from the Shockley Semiconductor Company in order to start their own transistor company,... SEE MORE >>
In the spring of 1960, a CIA spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. Overnight, the plane, the U-2, became the most famous aircraft in the world. Behind the dramatic incident is the incredible tale of a team of crea... SEE MORE >>
Explores the birth of the statue, the history of its construction, along with the evolution and meaning of the ideal, Liberty, for which it was constructed. The film delves into the enduring reality of the Statue: where sh... SEE MORE >>
This feature-length documentary explores the dramatic event that launched a worldwide rights movement. Told by those who took part - from drag queens and street hustlers to police detectives, journalists and a former mayor... SEE MORE >>
2010 will be the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, the first major social revolution of the 20th century and the first important challenge to the world order of the industrial-creditor nations. It is a conflict ... SEE MORE >>
The Zephyr was unlike any train seen before. Known as a "streamliner" for its long, sleek look, and powered by a revolutionary compact diesel engine, it would cover 1,015 miles in a record 15 hours. By the 1940s, fleets of... SEE MORE >>
SUMMER OF LOVE looks at the event that many consider the peak of the 1960's counter-culture movement, when thousands flocked to San Francisco, California only to discover that what they had come for was already disappearin... SEE MORE >>
They were called "Black Blizzards", dark clouds reaching miles into the sky, churning millions of tons of dirt into torrents of destruction. For ten years beginning in 1930, dust storms ravaged the parched and overplowed S... SEE MORE >>
At first rented only "to persons of good breeding", and seen as an expensive luxury for doctors and businessmen, within a decade the telephone had begun to transform American life. Trees gave way to telephone poles as oper... SEE MORE >>
Ken Burns's four-hour special program to bring the landmark nine-part documentary film series, BASEBALL, up to date. The Tenth Inning showcases the unforgettable heroics and achievements on the field over the past fifteen ... SEE MORE >>
When Louise Brown, the world's first test tube baby, was born in Great Britain in 1978, the event was heralded as the start of a revolution in human reproduction. It was the culmination of a decade-long scientific effort t... SEE MORE >>
In the early 20th century, the average American medicine cabinet was a would‐be poisoner’s treasure chest. There was radioactive radium in health tonics, thallium in depilatory creams, and morphine in teething medicine... SEE MORE >>
Telling the stories of the endlessly inventive men and women who transformed the world, They Made America explores the political, social, economic and environmental forces that made United States an incubator for so much r... SEE MORE >>
A film that probes the life of the revered author of the most sacred document in American history: The Declaration of Independence. Passionate about the rights of the individual, yet condemned as a lifelong owner of slaves... SEE MORE >>
This program examines the lawsuit against Henry Kissinger, in which he was charged with having authorized the assassination of a Chilean general in 1970, with engineering the secret bombing of Cambodia without the knowledg... SEE MORE >>
From award-winning producer David Grubin this biography presents a complex and revealing portrait of one of the most important American scientists of the twentieth century. Interweaving interviews with family members, scho... SEE MORE >>
On March 25th, 1911, a fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York's Greenwich Village. The blaze ripped through the congested loft; huge piles of trimmings fed the flames. Petrified workers desperately ... SEE MORE >>
Based on the book They Marched Into Sunlight by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer David Maraniss, this AMERICAN EXPERIENCE production tells the story of two turbulent days in October 1967. In Vietnam, a US battalion unwitt... SEE MORE >>
He was the son of former slaves and from 1904 to 1915 Jack Johnson was the best heavyweight boxer in the world. His 1908 victory over the white heavyweight champion triggered a worldwide search for "The Great White Hope" t... SEE MORE >>
It was perhaps the largest youth movement in human history. In 1968, China's Communist leader Mao Zedong sent more than 17 million teenagers "up to the mountain, down to the village" to learn from the peasants. His goal wa... SEE MORE >>
"Take no prisoners. Fight to the bitter end." Those were everyday words to combat troops on both sides at the end of World War II in the Pacific. AMERICAN EXPERIENCE looks at the escalation of bloodletting from the vantage... SEE MORE >>
For two and a half years, Americans fought against the British, Canadian colonists and native nations. Some of the War of 1812's battles and heroes became legendary, yet its blunders and cowards were just as prominent. Thi... SEE MORE >>
The night of October 30, 1938, began as any other peaceful Sunday evening. Then, at 8:15 pm, there was a report on the radio that Martians had landed in New Jersey. Almost instantly, people listening in responded to the sh... SEE MORE >>
This is a story about how the American West was lost and won, from the time of the Gold Rush in 1848 to the last gasp of the Indian Wars at Wounded Knee in 1893, when the West was settled, subdued, exploited and incorporat... SEE MORE >>
AMERICAN EXPERIENCE presents a provocative anthology of five inspiring and sometimes heartbreaking stories, highlighting Native ingenuity and resilience over the course of three hundred years and upending stereotypes of Am... SEE MORE >>
The West, an epic saga of the American West, chronicles the history of one of the most extraordinary landscapes on earth. It is a story of how individual and collective actions changed history and shaped a nation. The seri... SEE MORE >>
What makes George W. Bush tick? Much of the world is confounded by his righteous rhetoric, his narrow horizons, and his boundless certainty. But to America's conservative evangelicals, the Religious Right, Bush's story mak... SEE MORE >>
With his introduction of the popular Kodak and Brownie camera systems, George Eastman revolutionized the photographic industry, transforming a complex, expensive technology used by a small professional elite into one that ... SEE MORE >>
**OFFICIAL SELECTION, 2007 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL**
WONDERS OF MANY is a behind-the-scenes documentary following composer John Adams and director Peter Sellars over the course of a year as they work to forge the tale of J. ... SEE MORE >>
This film is the untold story of Vietnam's tunnels. It shows how a third world country -- one of the world's poorest nations -- defeated the world's mightiest army. Vietnamese filmmakers opened their archives and shared so... SEE MORE >>
WORSE THAN WAR, based on Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book of the same title, is the first documentary to step back and focus on the general phenomenon of genocide: offering viewers profound insights about its dimensions--its ... SEE MORE >>
Early in the new twentieth century at a remote spot on the outer coast of North Carolina, two young unknown Americans - brothers from Dayton, Ohio - succeeded as no human beings ever had. First one, then the other took off... SEE MORE >>
The life of Wyatt Earp is a lens on politics, justice, and economic opportunity in the American frontier. As a young man, Wyatt Earp was a caricature of the Western lawman, spending his days drinking in saloons, gambling, ... SEE MORE >>
