"A treasury of American Presidents by historian Ken Burns"--

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Based on the celebrated PBS television series, the complete text of an engrossing history of America’s least-understood conflict, “a significant milestone [that] will no doubt do much to determine how the war is understood for years to come.” —The Washington Post

More than forty years have passed since the end of the Vietnam War, but its memory continues to loom...

Having covered the Civil War and baseball in masterly documentaries, filmmaker Burns has now prepared a documentary on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Duncan (Out West, Doubleday, 1996) wrote the script for the film and this companion volume, which tells the story of that epic journey in a straightforward manner. The challenge in both film and book is to tell a familiar tale in a new way. The authors meet that challenge by retracing the expedition's...

This videodisc explores the extraordinary story of what happens when a freedom-loving nation outlaws the sale of intoxicating liquor, and the disastrous unintended consequences that follow. The utterly relevant cautionary tale raises profound questions about the proper role of government and the limits of legislating morality. When the country goes dry in 1920, after a century of debate, millions of law-abiding Americans become lawbreakers overnight....

Ken Burns documents the worst human-made ecological disaster in American history, when a frenzied wheat boom on the southern Plains, followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s, nearly swept away the breadbasket of the nation. Menacing black blizzards killed farmers' crops and livestock, threatened the lives of their children, and forced thousands of desperate families to pick up and move elsewhere. Vivid interviews, dramatic photographs, and...

Traces the birth of the national park idea in the mid-1800s and follows its evolution for nearly 150 years. Using archival photographs, first-person accounts of historical characters, personal memories and analysis from more than 40 interviews, and what Burns believes is the most stunning cinematography in Florentine Films' history, the series chronicles the steady addition of new parks through the stories of the people who helped create them and...

An epic documentary bringing life to America's most destructive - and defining - conflict. Here is the saga of celebrated generals and the ordinary soldiers. A heroic and transcendent president and a country that had to divide itself in two in order to become one again.