Catalog Search Results
Series
Summary
A compelling and complex story of one of the most convulsive and transformative eras in American history. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, the U.S. population doubled in the span of a single generation, national wealth expanded, and two classes rose simultaneously, separated by a gulf of experience and circumstance that was unprecedented in American life.
Series
Summary
Featuring the men and women who lived and worked at Grand Coulee in the wake of the Great Depression and the Native people whose lives were changed alongside historians and engineers, the film explores how the tension between technological achievement and environmental impact hangs over the project's legacy.
5) Walt Disney
Series
Summary
Walt Disney was uniquely adept at art as well as commerce, a master filmmaker who harnessed the power of technology and storytelling. This new film examines Disney's complex life and enduring legacy. Features rare archival footage from the Disney vaults, scenes from some of his greatest films, interviews with biographers and animators, and the designers who helped turn his dream of Disneyland into reality.
Series
Summary
Based on The New York Times best seller by Eric Schlosser the film tells the story of a 1980 accident at a Titan II missile complex in Damascus, Arkansas, in minute-by-minute detail through the accounts of Air Force personnel, weapon designers, and first responders who were there, revealing the incredible chain of events that brought America to the brink of nuclear disaster.
Series
Summary
For generations, Monopoly has been America's favorite board game, a love letter to unbridled capitalism and, for better or worse, the impulses that make our free-market society tick. An exhilarating game of no-holds-barred competition and brutal domination of opponents, it's a celebration of greed and accumulation of wealth with only one player standing at the end.
Series
Summary
In conjunction with the 100th anniversary of America's entry into the war on April 6, 1917, a six-hour documentary presented over three nights, explores how World War I changed America and the world. Drawing on the latest scholarship, including unpublished diaries, memoirs and letters, it tells the rich and complex story of the conflict through the voices of nurses, journalists, aviators and the American troops who came to be known as 'doughboys.'...
10) Woodrow Wilson
Summary
Using photos, letters, newsreels, archival footage and beautifully filmed reenactments, this program tells the story of a professor who became one of America's greatest presidents. It's the tale of an emotionally complex man who craved affection and demanded unquestioned loyalty. And it's a fascinating portrait of a towering intellectual, one who appeared to espouse unwavering moral principles but who nonetheless shredded civil liberties during wartime...
11) The mine wars
Series
Summary
At the beginning of the 20th century, coal was the engine of American industrial progress. Nearly three quarters of a million men across the country spent ten or twelve hours a day underground in coal mines. The Mine Wars brings to life the struggle that turned the coalfields of southern West Virginia into a blood-soaked war zone where basic constitutional rights and freedoms were violently contested.
Author
Series
Summary
"It is blatant, it is cheap, it is the apotheosis of the ridiculous. But it is something more; it is like Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone Park; it is a national playground, and not to have seen it is not to have seen your own country," said Reginald Wright Kauffman in 1909 of Coney Island, the tiny spit of land at the foot of Brooklyn that, at the turn of the century, became the most extravagant playground in the country and one of...
Author
Series
Summary
Riveted: The History of Jeans reveals the fascinating and surprising story of the iconic American garment. They're more than just a pair of pants -America's tangled past is woven deeply into the indigo fabric. From its roots in slavery to the Wild West, youth culture, hippies, high fashion and hip-hop, jeans are the fabric on which the history of American ideology and politics are writ large.
Author
Series
Summary
For 191 years the U.S. Supreme Court was populated only by men. When Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor as the first female justice in 1981, the announcement dominated the news. A pioneer who both reflected and shaped an era, in her 25 years as justice she was the swing vote in cases about some of the 20th century's most controversial issues-including race, gender and reproductive rights.
15) Voice of Freedom
Series
Summary
Follow the story of singer Marian Anderson, whose talent broke down barriers around the world. Narrated by Renée Elise Goldsberry (Hamilton), Voice of Freedom interweaves Anderson's rich life story with this landmark moment in history, exploring fundamental questions about talent, race, fame, democracy and the American soul.
17) The circus
Series
Summary
A four-hour mini-series that tells the story of one of the most popular and influential forms of entertainment in American history. Drawing upon a vast and rich visual archive, the film follows the rise and fall of the gigantic, traveling tented railroad circus, recounting the era when Circus Day could shut down a town, and circus stars were among the most famous people in the country.
Summary
Long before Paul Newman and Robert Redford immortalized them on screen, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid captivated Americans from coast to coast. In the 1890s, their exploits robbing banks and trains in the West, and then seemingly vanishing into thin air, became national news and the basis of rumors and myth.
19) Sealab
Series
Summary
In 1969 off the California coast, a US Navy crane carefully lowered a massive tubular structure into the waters. It was designed for an elite group of divers to spend days or even months at a stretch living and working on the ocean floor. The video tells the little-known story of the daring program that tested the limits of human endurance and revolutionized undersea exploration.