The American Flag

The American Flag: Two Centuries of Concord & Conflict

"The American Flag: Two Centuries of Concord & Conflict" is a one-hour television documentary on PBS featuring untold stories of the history of the American flag.

With rare archival footage, beautiful images of the historic flags, and stirring music composed for the film, this extraordinary program combines all these elements with reenactments, and interviews with eminent historians and flag experts about the history of the American experience and the flag. This special program is the definitive television documentary about the untold history of the American flag.

The film, "The American Flag: Two Centuries of Concord & Conflict" is based on the companion book of the same title. The authors of the book, Howard Madaus and Whitney Smith, both respected flag historians, are interviewed in the film.

More than any other people, Americans express the spirit of their lives in their national flag.

The passions of politics and patriotism, in times of peace and war, are strikingly expressed in these banners. Independence, the "People’s Flag", territorial acquisition, the "westward course of empire," slavery and abolition - these and a myriad of other issues have been translated into graphic form by those who made these flags and those who flew them.