America: The Story of Us

Division

45 min

Commerce and industry thrive across the new nation, now one of the wealthiest on Earth. The Erie Canal brings big risk and bigger reward. In the South, cotton is king but slavery fuels a growing divide. Violence flares across the territories and abolitionists make a stand for freedom. The election of Lincoln is a harbinger of war.

Civil War

45 min

The Civil War rages. The minie ball is the great equalizer on the battlefield. The formidable Confederate army cannot match the Union's mastery of technology; railroads, supply lines and the telegram become new weapons in a modern war. With Sherman's March, the South is definitively crushed.

Heartland

45 min

The Transcontinental Railroad unites the nation and transforms the Heartland. Native American civilizations decline as farmers settle the continent. Cattle replace wild buffalo as king of the Plains; the Cowboy becomes a new American icon.

Cities

45 min

Americans conquer a new frontier--the modern city--with Carnegie's empire of steel as its backbone. Skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty are symbols of the American Dream for millions of immigrants. Urban life introduces a new breed of social ills, set against the backdrop of stunning skylines and ambitious innovations.

Boom

45 min

America strikes oil and the boom time begins. Henry Ford brings the motorcar to the masses; the nation hits the road. Massive engineering projects modernize the West. Intended to cure vice, Prohibition fuels the growth of organized crime in burgeoning cities.

Bust

45 min

Boom turns to bust when the stock market crash ushers in the Great Depression. Dust storms blanket the Midwest in darkness. Roosevelt's New Deal signals recovery; thousands find work on projects like the Hoover Dam and Mount Rushmore. Hope for the American future collides with world conflict brewing in Europe.

World War II

45 min

The attack on Pearl Harbor brings America into World War. The war effort revitalizes the nation's economy. American innovation and manufacturing might invigorate the Allies in Europe and in the Pacific, the ultimate piece of technology ends the war; a new global superpower takes the stage.

Superpower

45 min

World War II transforms America into a global Superpower. The economy booms. Technology feeds the boom and a new age of consumerism is born. More than twenty thousand cars roll off production lines daily and - just like the Transcontinental Railroad more than a century before - the Interstate highways connect the country. After defending their country and their ideals the Greatest Generation comes home. Like the pioneers before them they push back the boundaries, plowing up over a million acres of virgin territory a year to create the suburbs. This pioneering spirit knows no bounds as first the jet age and then the space age takes America into the supersonic era. The first man walks on the moon - and plants the American flag. Optimism for the future prevails - but first America must deal with the past - and the issue of race. It's a second Civil War, but finally the Civil Rights movement brings the words of the Declaration of Independence home to ALL Americans - black and white.

Millennium

45 min

America booms, in population and prosperity. The "baby boomers" are the next generation to reinvent America. Powerful new technologies transform the nation. Television brings the world into the nation's living rooms, and changes lives and values in unexpected ways - but this is not just about entertainment. Just as newspapers shape America's identity in the Revolution and its sense of self in the Civil War, now television shapes a distant war in Vietnam and the response of all Americans to their changing society. The conflicts of the late 1960s and 1970s remind America of the divisions that opened up before the Civil War, but the boom of the 1980s heralds better times, with a confidence that mirrors the 1920s. A piece of plastic, the credit card, shapes the decade, creating new affluent classes, like the ‘yuppie' while the nation spends. The government spends too: on the technology that drives the last phase of the Cold War and puts the Shuttle into space. But as America reaches once more for the stars, technology meets tragedy in the Challenger disaster. As Americans have often discovered over 400 years, Pioneers sometimes have to pay the ultimate price. Innovation and a new California Gold Rush; the biggest technological breakthroughs yet are the personal computer and the internet. Technology transforms America, just as the telegraph and railroad once did. America‘s confidence is rocked by 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina - but it is still the world's superpower. As the nation launches into the 21st century, what does the future hold? Where is the next new frontier?