Ken Burns

"A comprehensive look at the Vietnam War"--

Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1933 presidential inauguration comes during the nation's worst economic crisis – the Great Depression. Banks have failed and savings accounts have been wiped out, so to explain the banking system and how it works, Franklin Roosevelt gives his first "fireside chat" to the American people. In fourteen and a half minutes he calms the public, and by the next Monday people begin to redeposit their money, thereby averting a...

Mark Twain was a lifelong creator and keeper of scrapbooks. He took them with him everywhere and filled them with souvenirs, pictures, and articles about his books and performances. But in time, he grew tired of the lost glue, rock-hard paste, and the swearing that resulted from the standard scrapbook process. So, he came up with the idea of printing thin strips of glue on the pages to make updates neat and easy to do. In 1872, he patented his “self-pasting”...

After William McKinley's assassination, Theodore Roosevelt arrives in Washington in 1901 as the youngest President of the United States. He is unwilling to let Congress dictate federal policies and he knows how to use his immense popularity with the press to disseminate his message to the public. With TR's presidency comes a string of firsts – the first to be known by his initials, the first to leave the country while in office, the first to own...

They called themselves the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, but because of their ecstatic dancing, the world called them Shakers. Though they were celibate, they are the most enduring religious experiment in American history. They believed in pacifism, natural health and hygiene, and for more than 200 years insisted that their followers should strive for simplicity and perfection in everything they did. The Shakers put their...

Jack Johnson — the first African-American Heavyweight Champion of the World, whose dominance over his white opponents spurred furious debates and race riots in the early 20th century — enters the ring once again in January 2005 when PBS airs Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, a provocative new PBS documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns. The two-part film airs on PBS Monday-Tuesday January 17-18, 2005, 9:00-11:00 p.m....

The Roosevelts: An Intimate History chronicles the lives of Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, three members of the most prominent and influential family in American politics. It is the first time in a major documentary television series that their individual stories have been interwoven into a single narrative. This seven-part, fourteen hour film follows the Roosevelts for more than a century, from Theodore's birth in 1858 to Eleanor's death...

By the late summer of 1939, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is halfway through his second term in office. Both he and Eleanor are tired and looking forward to retirement, but when Germany invades Poland on September 2, 1939, everything changes. Although the United States is poorly prepared for conflict, and a majority of his countrymen resist involvement, the President is determined to help the Allies by building up the army and bolstering the production...

In the 1920s, memories of Theodore Roosevelt begin to fade. The Great War is over, Woodrow Wilson is ill, and the American public is weary of domestic reform and events overseas. The Republican Party nominates Warren G. Harding for president, while Democratic nominee James M. Cox chooses thirty-eight-year-old Franklin D. Roosevelt to be his running mate. FDR campaigns with relish, and eventually persuades Eleanor to join him as he crisscrosses the...

"The epic story of the buffalo in America, from prehistoric times to today-a moving and beautifully illustrated work of natural history. The American buffalo-our nation's official mammal-is an improbable, shaggy beast that has found itself at the center of many of our most mythic and sometimes heartbreaking tales. The largest land animals in the Western Hemisphere, they are survivors of a mass extinction that erased ancient species that were even...