American Experience | Official Site

Film

Earth Days

A meditation on man’s complex relationship with nature and an engaging history of the revolutionary achievements and missed opportunities of eco-activism.

Tupperware! | Article

Brownie Wise

Brownie Wise was a role model for thousands of other women, and a businesswoman ahead of her time.

Citizen King | Article

An Interview with Orlando Bagwell

Acclaimed filmmaker Orlando Bagwell explores Martin Luther King, Jr.'s life and describes working on Citizen King.

Film

Explores how a series of deadly encounters between American citizens and federal law enforcement — including the standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco — led to the the worst act of domestic terrorism in American history.

Film

America 1900

America 1900 presents a comprehensive picture of what life was like in the United States at the turn of the century.

Film

The Circus

The Circus explores the colorful history of this popular, influential and distinctly American form of entertainment, from the first one-ring show at the end of the 18th century to 1956, when the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey big top was pulled down for the last time.

Film

Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World

The 300-year saga of the American whaling industry, from its origins off the coast of New England, through the age of deep ocean whaling, and on to its demise in the decades following the Civil War.

Film

The Movement and the “Madman”

Discover the story of the 1969 showdown between President Nixon and the antiwar movement. Told through firsthand accounts, the film reveals how movement leaders mobilized disparate groups to create two massive protests that changed history.

Article

Finding Frosty

A history of Americans and their snowmen.

New York: A Documentary Film | Article

Interviews: Writers

Explore the views and passions of a few writers, discussing how New York has inspired and nurtured them.

The Greely Expedition | Primary Source

Journal: Sgt. Rice

George Rice, the official photographer on the Lady Franklin Bay scientific expedition to the Arctic in 1881, kept a journal until he froze to death in April 1884.

Film

Malcolm X: Make it Plain

If any man expressed the anger, struggle and insistence of black people for freedom in the sixties, it was Malcolm X. In Omaha, he was Malcolm Little; later he became "Detroit Red," a small time street hustler. From prison emerged another Malcolm, the fiery, eloquent spokesman for the Nation of Islam. After a trip to Mecca, there was a last transformation — a new willingness to accept white allies. Who killed him and why has never been fully explained.

Film

Kit Carson

The ultimate frontiersman, Carson inspired popular novels before being associated with the "Long Walk" of the Navajo people.

Film

Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided

The six-part story of a frontiersman farmer and a wealthy Confederate slave-owner's daughter.

Film

Las Vegas: An Unconventional History

The story of Las Vegas' last hundred years is a distinctly American saga of optimism and opportunity. By 1999, it had become one of the fastest growing cities in the United States and could lay claim, in the words of one historian, to be "the first city of the twenty-first century." American Experience tells a rollercoaster story, peopled with unlikely heroes and villains, to trace the city's development from a remote frontier way-station to its Depression-era incarnation as the "Gateway to the Hoover Dam"; from its mid-century florescence as the gangster metropolis known as "Sin City" to its recent renaissance as a corporately-financed, postmodern, desert fantasyla