American Experience | PBS: Episodes
Harvard historian Thomas Patterson looks at political participation and America's two-party system in presidential elections.
George Mason University professor Rick Shenkman looks at presidential debates and their impact upon elections.
NPR news analyst Daniel Schorr and American University historian Allan Lichtman discuss the role of the party conventions in 2008.
Harvard University sociologist Orlando Patterson places Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign in the context of Democratic Party history.
At the height of the Great Depression, more than 250,000 teenagers were living on the road in America.
Historian Dan Carter places John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign in the context of the American conservative movement.
MIT historian Meg Jacobs examines the impact of economic issues during election years.
After eighty-two days as Vice-President, Harry Truman became the thirty-third President of the United States.
In March 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office and gave hope to a nation in crisis.
John Jay College historian Blanche Wiesen Cook looks back at Eleanor Roosevelt and discusses the role of the First Lady.
Filmmakers Austin Hoyt and Callie Taintor Wiser discuss the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Filmmaker Bernardo Ruiz discusses his biography of baseball's first Latino superstar.
New York Yankees pitcher LaTroy Hawkins discusses the legacy of Roberto Clemente.
Contemporary writers and poets read excerpts from Walt Whitman's signature work, Leaves of Grass.
International relations professor Ernest May from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and history professor Kristin Hoganson from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign describe foreign policy, presidential leadership, and elections.
When Arctic explorer Robert Peary returned from Greenland in 1897, he brought with him a seven-year-old boy named Minik.
Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin looks back at the 1968 presidential campaign and discusses the theory of "critical elections."
In the 1930s, Joe Louis crossed boxing's color line to become the most famous and influential black person in America.
As the American frontier was disappearing, William Cody transformed himself into a master showman named Buffalo Bill.
The legendary trapper, scout and soldier was fluent in Spanish and five Indian languages. When the West was a mystery to most Americans, Kit Carson mastered it.