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Browse the entire American Experience series featuring over 200 films. Watch full films online, download teacher’s guides, go behind the scenes, and learn more about your favorite films.
America's first superstar, Oakley was the main attraction of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. She thrilled audiences with her sharpshooting, and fueled nostalgia for the American frontier West.
After achieving fame for an exposeé on New York City's mental facility on Blackwell's Island, intrepid journalist Nelly Bly went on a journey around the world breaking the record of Julius Verne's fictional character.
William "Buffalo Bill" Cody's legendary exploits helped create the myth of the American West that still endures today.
City of the Century chronicles Chicago's dramatic transformation from a swampy frontier town of fur traders and Native Americans to a massive metropolis that was the quintessential American city of the nineteenth century.
Inventor Thomas Edison built the first practical light bulb and revolutionized the world. "The Wizard of Menlo Park" is also credited with the first record player and movie camera, among hundreds of other innovations.
The Native American leader fought against U.S. expansion onto Apache tribal land. The story of a tragic collision of two civilizations.
The dramatic story of the construction of New York City's Grand Central Terminal in 1913, lauded as the greatest railroad terminal in the world, with electrified train service under the city streets.
The laying of the transatlantic telegraph cable - an underwater communications link between North America and Europe - is a remarkable story of mid-19th century ingenuity and perseverance.
Schools taught Native Americans to imitate white men in a liberal "civilizing" mission in 1875. A story of cultural genocide - a humanist experiment gone bad.
The trial of Charles Julius Guiteau, who assassinated President James A. Garfield, turned into a public battle over the meaning of insanity.
Begun during the Civil War, the transcontinental railroad employed 20,000 men, mostly immigrants, who built the iron road with their bare hands.
When an earthen dam broke without warning, a small city in Pennsylvania was swept away in a wall of water over 30 feet high.
Against Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, General George Custer and his men were badly surprised and surrounded. The quick battle with no white survivors, told from both sides.
Richard Sears and Alva Curtis Roebuck brought consumer goods to the hands of every American with their Sears and Roebuck catalogue.
The New York City Subway was the largest public works project in history. Engineered by William Barclay Parsons, the 21-mile four-track route was completed in four years.
A look at the poor Scottish emigrant boy who built a fortune in telegraphy, railroads and steel, and then began systematically to give it all away.
Head of the most powerful family in America, billionaire John D. Rockefeller ran Standard Oil, a despised monopoly. It was up to John Jr. and his vast philanthropy to change the family's reputation.
The legendary tale of Emeline Gurney, who - as the story goes - sold an illegitimate child at the age of 14 only to marry him at a later age. She was cast out of 19th-century New England society and died in poverty.
Though first seen only as an expensive luxury for doctors and businessmen, Alexander Graham Bell's telephone soon transformed American life and became a necessity.
The tale of oil-seeking mavericks whose risk-taking, sweat and dreams changed an American industry.
George Eastman introduced the Kodak and Brownie camera systems and transformed photography into something anybody could do.
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