Civil War Journal

Will Smith hosts this look at the evolving, often lethal, fight for equal rights in America through the lens of the US Constitution's 14th Amendment.

An unprecedented look at the decade-long odyssey to land a man on the moon. This documentary pulls back the curtain on the familiar narrative of the moonshot, revealing a fascinating stew of scientific innovation, political calculation, media spectacle, visionary impulses and personal drama.

Caroline Randall Williams, an award-winning writer, cookbook author and restaurateur, travels the United States uncovering the fascinating, essential and often untold black stories behind American food.

A documentary on the American Civil War narrated by Ken Burns, covering the secession of the Confederacy to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery tells the remarkable story of the entire Corps of Discovery – not just of the two Captains, but the young army men, French-Canadian boatmen, Clark’s African-American slave, and the Shoshone woman named Sacajawea, who brought along her infant son. As important to the story as these many characters, however, was the spectacular land itself, and the promises it held.

We have been colonised by the machines we have built. Although we don't realise it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers.

Explore the revolutionary life of one of the 18th century’s most consequential and compelling personalities, whose work and words unlocked the mystery of electricity and helped create the United States.

A 4-part documentary series with over 3 hours of historical content.

Relentless sheriffs, trigger-happy gunslingers, steadfast saloon owners and cocky cowboys are all found in the "Lucky Luke" albums, which have influenced entire generations of comic readers. For the three-part series "In the boots of Lucky Luke", the French comic author Jul traveled to the USA to trace the role models of the familiar comic characters.

Inspired in part by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s “Americans and the Holocaust” exhibition and supported by its historical resources, this documentary series examines the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany in the context of global antisemitism and racism, the eugenics movement in the United States, and race laws in the American south.

The American Future: A History is a four-part documentary series written and presented by Simon Schama which aired on BBC Two in the UK during October 2008, in the run up to the 2008 US presidential election. The first episode was broadcast on BBC Two at 9:00pm on 10 October 2008, and it was shown over four consecutive Fridays. The series saw Schama travelling through the United States as he investigated the conflicts from its past in order to understand the country's contemporary political situation. Schama presents and discusses both presidential candidates, Democratic Barack Obama and Republican John McCain from a historical point of view, emphasizing strongly the former. The documentary takes viewer to an epic journey through the history of the modern United States, but it also why Schama personally believed Barack Obama would be the ideal choice as the next president of the United States.

Out of the ashes of World War I, a new generation of titan rises…Pierre Du Pont, Walter Chrysler, J.P. Morgan Jr., Henry Ford, and William Boeing. Their fight to reach the top will transform America as they compete to dominate new industries—from the highways to the skyways. After years of fighting each other, and FDR, these rivals must unite during World War II to defeat a greater enemy and save the world.

The story of the aftermath of the Civil War and how the United States transformed into the “land of opportunity" spanning the years 1865 to 1890. Transporting into the violent world of cowboys, Indians, outlaws and law men, the story chronicles the personal, little-known stories of Western legends such as Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.

History as we generally know it is full of holes or half-truths, and a mother lode of juicy details have been lost, distorted, covered up or simply ignored along the way. Former Naval officer and actor Jamie Kaler is on a mission to set the record straight on the most familiar and beloved stories from our nation's and military's past, filling in the blanks, debunking the occasional myth, and exploring why we sometimes get our own history, well, slightly wrong

This documentary-series examines Grant's life story using his perspective and experiences to explore a turbulent time in history: the Civil War and Reconstruction.

The Century: America's Time is a 15-part series of documentaries produced by the American Broadcasting Company on the 20th century and the rise of the United States as a superpower. The documentary originally aired on The History Channel in 1999. Another earlier series, simply called "The Century" also produced by ABC, appeared on the ABC network in 1999, and also later appeared on the History Channel. It consists of six two-hour shows with each chronicling two different events based around a common theme.

Since its birth in 1865, in the wake of the American Civil War, the history of the Ku Klux Klan has been inseparable from that of the United States. The debates over slavery, the populism in the roaring twenties, the struggle for civil rights in the sixties, the rise of the far-right in the early 21st century; the Klan seems to have always embodied the dark side of the nation, with its gray areas and blind spots.

The first permanent European settlement in the United States was founded two generations before the Pilgrims arrived in 1565—not by English Protestants, but by a melting pot of Spanish, Africans, Italians, Germans, Irish and converted Jews, who integrated almost immediately with the indigenous tribes. America’s Untold Story, from Secrets of the Dead, uncovers the story of America’s past that never made it into textbooks.

China: The Making of a Nation is the story of the painful transformation of the vast Qing Empire into the Chinese nation after the 1911 revolution. Spanning more than a century up to the Xi Jinping era, the story pits the two pivotal leaders of this transformation against each other: Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Republic of China for 47 years, and Mao Zedong, who rose from ‘red bandit’ to master of the mainland in 1949. Sworn enemies, they fought a merciless battle: first military, then diplomatic, and finally, beyond their deaths, in the conflicting memories of the Taiwanese and the Chinese of the People's Republic. Beyond their fierce hatred, the two tyrants also had much in common: a certain vision of Chinese territory and the greatness of China, the desire to regain the country's sovereignty and the quest for a Chinese identity in a nation that also includes Tibetans, Uighurs, Mongols... and a certain ability to rewrite history.

Take a journey back in time and immerse yourself in a 150-year-old battle that nearly split our nation in two. This three-part series explores famous and little known aspects of the Civil War, from the perspectives of the Union, the Confederacy and the millions of enslaved people struggling for freedom. Hosted by Ashley Judd, Trace Adkins, and Dennis Haysbert, all of whom had ancestors greatly affected by the war, this series delivers fresh insights and untold tales, brought to life through dramatic recreations and the Smithsonian Institution's vast collection of artifacts.