Trapped in the Sierra Nevadas during the bitter winter of 1846, nearly 90 members of the Donner and Reed families longed for California's "Promised Land." But an untried shortcut became a death warrant for half of them victims of madness, death, and cannibalism. The program re-creates the Donner Party's journey from family journals, newspaper accounts, and interviews with historians and descendants.

A unique and revealing analysis of the diverse body that made up the American revolutionary army One of the images Americans hold most dear is that of the drum-beating, fire-eating Yankee Doodle Dandy rebel, overpowering his British adversaries through sheer grit and determination. The myth of the classless, independence-minded farmer or hard-working artisan-turned-soldier is deeply ingrained in the national psyche. Charles Neimeyer here separates...

A landmark contribution to women's history that sheds new light on the Salem witch trials and one of its most crucial participants, Tituba of The Crucible In this important book, Elaine Breslaw claims to have rediscovered Tituba, the elusive, mysterious, and often mythologized Indian woman accused of witchcraft in Salem in 1692 and immortalized in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Reconstructing the life of the slave woman at the center of the notorious...

One of the most hotly debated issues in the historical study of race relations is the question of how the Civil War and Reconstruction affected social relations in the South. Did the War leave class and race hierarchies intact? Or did it mark the profound disruption of a long-standing social order? Yankee Town, Southern City examines how the members of the southern community of Lynchburg, Virginia experienced four distinct but overlapping events--Secession,...

High on a granite cliff in South Dakota's Black Hills tower four huge carved faces of American presidents. But is Mount Rushmore a monstrosity, or a masterpiece? A temperamental artist, Gutzon Borglum, propelled the project by sheer talent and guts, even as his ego and obsession threatened to tear it apart. Relive the hucksterism and hyperbole of his massive public works project during the Great Depression. Narrated by Michael Murphy.

Episode two looks at New York's rise as a burgeoning cultural center and multi-ethnic port, concluding with the Civil War Draft Riots, America's bloodiest civil disturbance.

Episode four follows New York into a new century, examining the interplay of capitalism, democracy and transformation in the wake of an extraordinary wave of immigration and the birth of the skyscraper.

"City of Tomorrow" (1929-1945)--Immense new forces were unleashed in New York, from the Depression to the New Deal, which permanently altered the city. Along the way, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and master builder Robert Moses attempted to create a bold new city of the future

"The City and the World" (1945 to present)--The final episode chronicles the history of New York from the end of the Second World War to the present, exploring the complexities of the modern city and the turbulent years of physical, social and cultural change in the decades following the war

In 1975, with the end of the war in Vietnam imminent, Mai Thi Kim, a poor, young Vietnamese woman, sent her seven-year-old daughter to America as part of a controversial evacuation program known as Operation Babylift. Kim believed her daughter Hiep -- who was conceived during a brief love affair with an American Naval officer -- would be in danger in Vietnam. Hiep's journey took her to Pulaski, Tennessee, where she was adopted by a single woman and...