Ken Burns
Description
"Americans aren't wrong in seeing the West as a land of the future, a land in which astonishing things are possible. What they often are wrong about is that there's no price to be paid for that, that everybody can succeed, or that even what succeeds is necessarily the best for all concerned. The West is much more complicated than that." - Richard WhiteBy 1877, the American conquest of the West was nearly complete. For every Indian in the West, there...
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The West, a nine-part series, chronicles the turbulent history of one of the most extraordinary landscapes on earth-a place that is simultaneously enticing and forbidding, filled with stories of both heartbreaking tragedy and undying hope. Beginning when the land belonged only to Native Americans and ending in the 20th century, the film introduces unforgettable characters-from gold seekers to cowboys, from homesteaders to Indian leaders-whose competing...
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The American realizes that 'Progress is God.' The destiny of the American people is to subdue the continent -- to rush over this vast field to the Pacific Ocean... to change darkness into light and confirm the destiny of the human race... Divine task! Immortal mission! The pioneer army perpetually strikes to the front. Empire plants itself upon the trails. William GilpinBy 1821, no one knew who would control the West's seemingly infinite spaces, what...
64) Death Runs Riot
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"Time after time, Congress and the people in the East saw the West as a safety valve, a place where you could go and escape the problems of where you were, it was part of the whole myth of the West. You could escape and be free. Well, we thought we could escape whatever national tensions and unresolved problems we had, but it came back you know, like a big wind from the prairie, bigger and bigger each time. - Dayton DuncanThe United States had envisioned...
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In his time, Mark Twain was considered the funniest man on earth. Yet he was also an unflinching critic of human nature, using his humor to attack hypocrisy, greed and racism. In this series, Ken Burns has created an illuminating portrait of the man who is also one of the greatest writers in American history.
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I see over my own continent the Pacific railroad surmounting every barrier. I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte, carrying freight and passengers. I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring... - Walt WhitmanIt had taken the bloodshed and sacrifice of the Civil War to reunite the nation, North and South. But when the war was over, Americans set out with equal determination to unite the nation, East and West.To do it, they would build...
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Profiles Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor as the most prominent members of the most important family in history. Through their stories, PBS chronicles the history they helped to shape, from the Square Deal to the New Deal, San Juan Hill to the Western Front, to the founding of the United Nations.
69) Hemingway
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"Hemingway examines the visionary work and turbulent life of one of the greatest and most influential American writers-Ernest Hemingway. Intimate and insightful, the series weaves together Hemingway's biography with excerpts from his work. The film penetrates the myth of Hemingway to reveal a deeply troubled and ultimately tragic figure."--container.
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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 crisis....
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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"...
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Thomas Jefferson is a two-part portrait of one of the most fascinating and complicated figures ever to walk across America's public stage - our enigmatic and brilliant third president. Thomas Jefferson embodies within his own life the most profound contradictions of American history: as the author of our most sacred document, the Declaration of Independence, he gave voice to our fervent desire for freedom, but he also owned more than 150 human beings...
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For 50 years radio dominated the airwaves and the American consciousness as the first "mass medium." In Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, Ken Burns examines the lives of three extraordinary men who shared the primary responsibility for this invention and its early success, and whose genius, friendship, rivalry and enmity interacted in tragic ways. This is the story of Lee de Forest, a clergyman's flamboyant son, who invented the audion tube;...
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Beginning with a searing indictment of slavery, this first episode dramatically evokes the causes of the war, from the Cotton Kingdom of the South to the northern abolitionists who opposed it. Here are the burning questions of Union and States' rights, John Brown at Harper's Ferry, the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the firing on Fort Sumter and the jubilant rush to arms on both sides. Along the way the series' major figures are introduced:...
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The longest-serving president in U.S. history, and leader through the Great Depression and World War II -- two of the nation's worst crises -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt is considered by many to be our greatest president. In his early years, as a pampered, sheltered scion of a wealthy family, FDR exhibited no outward signs of greatness. With his cousin Theodore as a role model, however, FDR purposely forged a successful political career for himself,...
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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...
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By April of 1944, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt have occupied the White House for more than eleven years. The President is secretly convalescing in South Carolina from a recently diagnosed bout of congestive heart failure while the war rages overseas and his family is under press scrutiny at home. Despite his failing health, FDR has ambitious postwar plans for his country: to see the horrific struggle through to victory, and then to bring the United...
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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 an...
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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...