Ken Burns

"From one of our most treasured filmmakers, a pictorial history of America-a stunning and moving collection of Ken Burns's favorite photographs"--

A documentary about a Vermont school for boys with learning disabilities who memorize and recite Abraham Lincoln's iconic Gettysburg Address, which he gave 150 years ago this November.

In this evocative and lavishly illustrated narrative, Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan delve into the history of the park idea, from the first sighting by white men in 1851 of the valley that would become Yosemite and the creation of the world's first national park at Yellowstone in 1872, through the most recent additions to a system that now encompasses nearly four hundred sites and 84 million acres.

The film tells the story of a tiny school in Putney Vermont, the Greenwood School, where each year the students are encouraged to memorize, practice and recite the Gettysburg Address. In its exploration of the Greenwood School, the film also unlocks the history, context and importance of President Lincoln's most powerful address. The Greenwood School students, boys ages 11-17, all face a range of complex learning differences that make their personal,...

Until the arrival of European and American settlers in the late nineteenth century, the southern Plains of the United States were predominantly grasslands, the home and hunting grounds of many Native American tribes and the range of untold millions of bison. It was seldom used for farming. Bitterly cold winters, hot summers, high winds and especially low, unreliable precipitation made it unsuitable for standard agriculture. But at the start of the...

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...

During the tumultuous era known as the "Jazz Age," the rhythms and spirit of jazz music mirror the world that emerged in the wake of World War I. The program introduces two extraordinary individuals: Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong.

Los Angeles steals its water supply, millions of Mexicans migrate north, and Hollywood begins to shape the West and the nation's image of it. Homesteaders and fortune-seekers still arrived, even though much of the best land had already been claimed. And the frenzy over what was left touched off human stampedes, while whole towns opened for business overnight. But for the first inhabitants of the West, it seemed that a way of life that had lasted for...

As the Great Depression deepens, jazz thrives. The saxophone emerges as an iconic instrument of the music and women musicians emerge on the jazz scene. Benny Goodman holds the first-ever jazz concert at Carnegie Hall.

Louis Armstrong arrives in New York from Chicago where, during a brief stay with the Fletcher Henderson band, he amazes his fellow musicians and teaches the city to swing. Follow musicians Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Bix Beiderbecke, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Sidney Bechet, Ethel Waters and Duke Ellington, who begins his incomparable career as the pre-eminent composer in jazz history.