American Experience
TV-PG
8.6
1988
Documentary
TV's most-watched history series brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today.
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Episode 13 : Ulysses S. Grant (1): The Warrior
April. 01,2002
A moody two-part biography of Ulysses S. Grant (1822-85). Part 1, "Warrior," quickly sketches his largely unsuccessful pre-Civil War life and ends on Good Friday 1865, when his wife told him to turn down a theater invitation because she didn't like the company of Mary Lincoln. During the war, Grant owed his success to his ability to treat his often unruly troops as he did his horses: calmly, firmly, quietly. But if he was a hero at Fort Donelson and Vicksburg, he's also described as being a "butcher" at Shiloh and Cold Harbor.
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Episode 5 : Woodrow Wilson (2): The Redemption of the World
January. 13,2002
Woodrow Wilson reluctantly enters World War I in an effort to "make the world safe for democracy" as this two-part profile concludes. He wins the war but loses the peace, as he's confounded first by the French and British at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919; then by the Republicans in the Senate, who thwart U.S. entry into the League of Nations. Meanwhile, Wilson marries Edith Bolling-Galt (voice of Marion Ross) less than a year after his first wife dies. Edith would emerge as the President's virtual "regent" when Wilson suffers a stroke in 1919. Voice of Wilson: Rene Auberjonois.
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Episode 4 : Woodrow Wilson (1): A Passionate Man
January. 06,2002
A two-part profile of Woodrow Wilson in which news clips, atmospheric re-creations and readings (Rene Auberjonois and Blair Brown provide the voices of Wilson and his first wife, Ellen) supplement interviews with historians. Part 1 takes Wilson (1856-1924) from his Georgia childhood to the outbreak of World War I -- just as Ellen dies. "He's got to deal with the breakdown in the world," historian John Milton Cooper says. "And he's got to deal with the breakdown in his personal life."
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Episode 2 : New York (7): The City and the World
September. 17,2001
Conclusion. "The City and the World" begins in 1945, with New York "at the pinnacle," says historian David McCullough. By 1975 it was: "Ford to City: Drop Dead," as a Daily News headline put it. The program charts the city's decline as it follows what narrator David Ogden Stiers calls "a maelstrom of destruction in the name of urban renewal." Part and parcel of it were the highways Robert Moses built, many through vibrant neighborhoods. The city rebounded in the '80s.
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Episode 1 : New York (6): The City of Tomorrow
September. 10,2001
"City of Tomorrow (1929-45)" focuses on Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who used his close ties to FDR to make the city "a gigantic laboratory of civic reconstruction"; and master builder Robert Moses, who "adapted a 19th century city to 20th century circumstances," says historian Kenneth Jackson. The biggest one: the car. Says narrator David Ogden Stiers: "It challenged all previous assumptions about urban life."
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