American Experience | Official Site

The Man Behind Hitler | Article

Historian Q & A

Martin Kitchen is an internationally recognized expert on German and Austrian military and economic history. Here he answers questions on Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich, and America.

Silicon Valley | Image Gallery

Silicon Valley Pioneers

Twelve men whose work and innovations helped to launch the some of the most significant technological advances in history.

Film

The Swamp, explores the repeated efforts to reclaim, control and transform what was seen as a vast wasteland into an agricultural and urban paradise, and, ultimately, the drive to preserve America’s greatest wetland.

Film

Fly With Me

The story of the pioneering women who changed the world while flying it. Maligned as feminist sellouts, “stewardesses,” as they were called, were on the frontlines of a battle to assert gender equality and transform the workplace.

Monkey Trial | Article

Book Excerpt: The Speeches We Keep in Our Heads

Peggy Noonan is a former television writer and presidential speechwriter. The speeches she wrote for President Ronald Reagan were widely admired for their effectiveness.

The Transcontinental Railroad | Timeline

Transcontinental Railroad Timeline

Travel back time and learn about key events surrounding the Transcontinental Railroad, from 1769 to 1889.

New York: A Documentary Film | Timeline

Timeline (1609-2001)

Learn about some important events in New York history, from 1609 up to 2001.

Film

Jesse Owens

His stunning triumph at the 1936 Olympic Games captivated the world even as it infuriated the Nazis.

Film

The Big Burn

In the summer of 1910, hundreds of wildfires raged across the Northern Rockies. By the time it was all over, more than three million acres had burned and at least 78 firefighters were dead. It was the largest fire in American history.

Film

Public Enemy #1

From 1933 to 1934, America was thrilled and terrorized by John Dillinger, a desperado, a bank robber, a bad man no jail could hold. His reputation grew until he was named the country's first Public Enemy #1 and hunted by virtually every cop in America. Operating during a time of great hardship, Dillinger became a mythic figure who struggled against authority and garnered the support of many ordinary Americans, particularly those hardest hit by the Great Depression. Dillinger finally met his match in J. Edgar Hoover, who used the outlaw's celebrity to burnish his own reputation and that of his national law enforcement agency, the FBI. Hoover won the day making sure in the process that the moral of Dillinger's tale was "crime doesn't pay."

Film

The Greely Expedition

In 1881, 25 men led by Adolphus Greely set sail from Newfoundland to Lady Franklin Bay in the high Arctic, where they planned to collect a wealth of scientific data from a vast area of the world’s surface that had been described as a "sheer blank." Three years later, only six survivors returned, with a daunting story of shipwreck, starvation, mutiny and cannibalism.

Eisenhower | Article

U-2 Incident

Official documents record a dialogue between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. after an American spy plane goes down in Soviet territory.

Andrew Carnegie: The Richest Man in the World | Article

The Gilded Age

During the "Gilded Age," every man was a potential Andrew Carnegie, and Americans who achieved wealth celebrated it as never before.

Video Gallery

Should the U.S. Police the World?

From the Vietnam War, Persian Gulf and Iraq, watch these clips from American Experience's Presidents Collection.

The Mormons | Article

Interview: Margaret Toscano

Margaret Toscano was excommunicated from the LDS Church in 2000. She is founder of the Mormon Women's Forum. Toscano currently teaches classics at the University of Utah. This is the edited transcript of an interview conducted Jan. 27, 2006.

Film

Command and Control

How do you manage weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them?

Fidel Castro | Article

A Moderate in the Cuban Revolution

In October 1959, Huber Matos wrote Castro a letter resigning his command, citing his concern with the growing influence of Communists in Cuba's revolutionary government.