Ken Burns

"A treasury of American Presidents by historian Ken Burns"-- Provided by publisher. Burns explores the legacy of each of America's presidents, from George Washington to Barack Obama. Each two-page spread covers the basic facts of the era, the man, and an important aspect of his presidency.

Explore the history of a uniquely American art form: country music. From its deep and tangled roots in ballads, blues and hymns performed in small settings, to its worldwide popularity, learn how country music evolved over the course of the 20th century, as it eventually emerged to become America’s music. COUNTRY MUSIC features never-before-seen footage and photographs, plus interviews with more than 80 country music artists. The eight-part series...

1862 saw the birth of modern warfare and the transformation of Lincoln’s war to preserve the Union into a war to emancipate the slaves. Episode Two begins with the political infighting that threatened to swamp Lincoln’s administration and then follows Union General George McClellan’s ill-fated campaign on the Virginia Peninsula, where his huge army meets a smaller but infinitely more resourceful Confederate force. During this episode we witness...

The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's ten-part, 18-hour documentary series, The Vietnam War, tells the epic story of one of the most consequential, divisive, and controversial events in American history as it has never before been told on film. Visceral and immersive, the series explores the human dimensions of the war through revelatory testimony of nearly 80 witnesses from all sides -- Americans who fought...

Immigrants to America eagerly root for baseball, but baseball is trying to endure a decade that includes the meanest, vilest, angriest player ever to step onto a field and a scandal that almost destroys the game.

Provides a history of the Civil War based on the PBS television series "The Civil War," with maps and text which interweave the author's narrative with the voices of the men and women who lived through the war; and includes essays by historians of the era.

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 companion volume to the PBS documentary film about the first—and perhaps most astonishing—automobile trip across the United States.
In 1903 there were only 150 miles of paved roads in the entire nation and most people had never seen a “horseless buggy”—but that did not stop Horatio Nelson Jackson, a thirty-one-year-old Vermont doctor, who impulsively bet fifty dollars that he could drive his 20-horsepower automobile...

As companion to his PBS series airing in September 2007, "The War" focuses on the citizens of four towns--Luverne, Minnesota; Sacramento, California; Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama, following more than forty people from 1941 to 1945. Maps and hundreds of photographs enrich this compelling, unflinching narrative.

"At the tiny Greenwood School in the small New England town of Putney, Vermont, its roughly 50 students, boys from the ages 11 to 17 are asked each year to memorize the Gettysburg Address. This would be a daunting assignment for any student, but the boys at Greenwood all suffer from learning differences that have made their personal, academic and social progress extremely challenging. As the students come to terms with the address's simple message...