American Experience | Official Site

MacArthur | Article

Emperor Hirohito and PM Yoshida

The man known as Tenno to his subjects and Hirohito to the rest of the world ranks as one of the most enigmatic figures of the 20th century.

Roads to Memphis | Article

Dr. King's Bookshelf

Clayborne Carson discusses King's relationship to the Bible, his opinion of Marx, and the science fiction novel that helped shape his activism.

The Mine Wars | Image Gallery

West Virginia Mining

What was it like to live in a company town and work in the mines? Explore photos that help tell the story.

Film

Andrew Carnegie: The Richest Man in the World

Andrew Carnegie built a fortune in telegraphy, railroads, and steel. And then began, systematically, to give it all away.

Film

The Amish

Their intense faith and strict adherence to 300-year-old traditions have by turn captivated and repelled, awed and irritated, inspired and confused America.

Interview: Native Americans poster image

The Transcontinental Railroad | Article

Donald Fixico, Thomas Bowlus Distinguished Professor of American Indian History and Director of the Center for Indigenous Nations Studies at the University of Kansas, talks about the West before white settlement.

Fidel Castro | Article

Interview Excerpts

Filmmaker Adriana Bosch sought out thoughtful voices to tell the story of Fidel Castro. Read excerpts from interviews with historians, journalists, and analysts.

Film

The Alaska Pipeline

In the early weeks of 1968, after a decade-long search for oil in Alaska's frozen wilderness, gas burst out of an exploratory well on the North Slope with such force the crew thought it was about to blow. Geologists soon calculated that as much as ten billion barrels of oil lay below the frozen tundra of Prudhoe Bay -- the largest oil find in North America.

Film

War of the Worlds

Shortly after 8 p.m. on Halloween Eve, 1938, a panicked radio announcer broke in with a news bulletin that Martians had landed in the tiny town of Grovers Mill, New Jersey.

Film

The Vote

One hundred years after the passage of the 19th Amendment, The Vote tells the dramatic culmination story of the hard-fought campaign waged by American women for the right to vote, a transformative cultural and political movement that resulted in the largest expansion of voting rights in U.S. history.

Billy Graham | Chapter

Billy Graham: Chapter 1

Watch a preview of Billy Graham.

Collection

Scenes of Summer

From Massachusetts to Mississippi, see snapshots of how Americans spent the hottest months of the year.

The Wright Stuff | Article

Historian Joseph Corn

Despite being bicycle mechanics, Wrights had a sense of some of the scientific challenges that had to be first solved before moving to designing and building an airplane.

Reconstruction: The Second Civil War | Article

The Myth of Reconstruction

Historians review some myths and misconceptions about the Reconstruction era.

Film

The Mine Wars

At the dawn of the 20th century, the struggle over coal — the material that fueled America — led to the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War and turned parts of West Virginia into a bloody war zone.

The Rockefellers | Article

Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera and the Rockefellers could not have been more different. And yet, for a brief moment in the midst of the turbulent 1930s, they shared the spotlight in a bizarre and very public drama.