He is an American icon; his voice as comforting as the American landscape, his songs as familiar as the color of the sky, his face as worn as the Rocky Mountains.

Porter gained a name for her flawless prose. Often concerned with the themes of justice, betrayal, and the unforgiving nature of the human race, Porter’s writings occupied the space where the personal and political meet.

View a list of all the American Masters episodes.

She became a writer at a time when writers were celebrities and their recklessness was admirable. Like Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, and Hammett, Lillian Hellman was a smoker, a drinker, a lover, and a fighter.

She was the archetypal silent film heroine -- the delicate damsel in distress, fainting on an ice floe, cowering before a brutal bounder, languishing in a garret.

The title of Charles Atlas' new documentary on Merce Cunningham may be taken quite literally: his mother described his dancing down the aisle of the church the family attended in Centralia, Washington, at the age of four.

American Masters pays tribute to a man who was known as a designer, architect, poet, educator, engineer, philosopher, environmentalist, and humanitarian.

Eakins left behind a body of work unprecedented in American art for its depth, strength, perception, character, and commitment to realism.

Pulitzer Prize winner Norman Mailer’s career in our literature has been at once so brilliant, varied, controversial, public, and prolific and misunderstood.