Ken Burns

"A treasury of American Presidents by historian Ken Burns"--

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 West begins as the whole world to the people who live there. It becomes a New World when Europeans arrive, a world shaken by incompatible visions. And almost three centuries later, when Lewis and Clark venture west to find a Northwest Passage, this world becomes the testing-ground for a young nation's continent-spanning dream.

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"...

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....

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:...

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...

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....

"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 Duncan. The United States had envisioned...

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 Gilpin. By 1821, no one knew who would control the West's seemingly infinite spaces,...