A History of America

American history moves from west to east, beginning with Ice Age migrations, through the corn civilizations of Middle America, to the explorations of Columbus, de Soto, and other S...

As the American character begins to take shape in the early seventeenth century, English settlements develop in New England and Virginia. Their personalities are dramatically diffe...

Benjamin Franklin and Franklin's Philadelphia take center stage in this program. As the merchant class grows in the North, the economies of southern colonies are built on the shoul...

Professor Maier tells the story of how the English-loving colonist transforms into the freedom-loving American rebel. The luminaries of the early days of the Republic – Washington,...

After the War for Independence, the struggle for a new system of government begins. Maier looks at the creation of the Constitution of the United States. The Republic survives a se...

At the dawn of the 19th century, the size of the United States doubles with the Louisiana Purchase. The Appalachians are no longer the barrier to American migration west; the Missi...

Individual enterprise merges with technological innovation to launch the Commercial Revolution – the seedbed of American industry. The program features the ideas of Adam Smith, the...

The Industrial Revolution has its dark side, and the tumultuous events of the period touch off intense and often thrilling reform movements. Professor Masur presents the ideas and...

While the North develops an industrial economy and culture, the South develops a slave culture and economy, and the great rift between the regions becomes unbreachable. Masur looks...

Simmering regional differences ignite an all-out crisis in the 1850s. Professor Martin teams with Professor Miller and historian Stephen Ambrose to chart the succession of incident...

As the Civil War rages, all eyes turn to Vicksburg, where limited war becomes total war. Professor Miller looks at the ferocity of the fighting, at Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamat...

Professor Miller begins the program by evoking in word and picture the battlefield after the battle of Gettysburg. With the assassination of President Lincoln, one sad chapter of A...

As America celebrates its centennial, five million citizens descend on Philadelphia to celebrate America's technological achievements, but some early principles of the Republic rem...

Steel and stockyards are the mighty engine of industrialism thunders forward at the end of the 19th century. Miller continues the story of the American Industrial Revolution in New...

Miller explores the tension between the messy vitality of cities that grow on their own and those where orderly growth is planned. Chicago – with Hull House, the World's Columbian...

Professor Scharff continues the story of Jefferson's Empire of Liberty. Railroads and ranchers, rabble-rousers and racists populate America's distant frontiers, and Native American...

The making of money pits laborers against the forces of capital as the twentieth century opens. Miller introduces the miner as the quintessential laborer of the period – working un...

Professor Brinkley compares the presidencies of Roosevelt and Wilson – the Warrior and the Minister – in the first decades of the 20th century. Miller and Brinkley discuss American...

Professor Martin offers a fresh perspective on Progressivism, arguing that its spirit can be best seen in the daily struggles of ordinary people. In a discussion with Scharff and M...

The Roaring Twenties take to the road in Henry Ford's landscape-altering invention -- the Model T. Ford's moving assembly line, the emergence of a consumer culture, and the culmina...

Brinkley continues his story of 20th century presidents with a profile of Roosevelt. Brinkley paints a picture of America during the Depression and chronicles some of Roosevelt's p...

America is enveloped in total war, from mobilization on the home front to a scorching air war in Europe. Miller's view of WWII is a personal essay on the morality of total war, and...

World War II is fought to its bitter end in the Pacific and the world lives with the legacy of its final moment: the atomic bomb. Miller continues the story as veterans return from...

Scharff weaves the story of the Civil Rights movement with stories of the Vietnam War and Watergate to create a portrait of a decade. Lyndon B. Johnson emerges as a pivotal charact...

The entire team of historians joins Miller in examining the last quarter of the 20th century. A montage opens the program and sets the stage for a discussion of the period – and of...

Storytelling is a relentless human urge and its power forges with memory to become the foundation of history. Novelists Charles Johnson (Middle Passage), Arthur Golden (Memoirs of...