Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1933 presidential inauguration comes during the nation's worst economic crisis - the Great Depression. Banks have failed and savings accounts have been wiped out, so to explain the banking system and how it works, Franklin Roosevelt gives his first "fireside chat" to the American people. In fourteen and a half minutes he calms the public, and by the next Monday people begin to redeposit their money, thereby averting a crisis....

After William McKinley's assassination, Theodore Roosevelt arrives in Washington in 1901 as the youngest President of the United States. He is unwilling to let Congress dictate federal policies and he knows how to use his immense popularity with the press to disseminate his message to the public. With TR's presidency comes a string of firsts - the first to be known by his initials, the first to leave the country while in office, the first to own an...

By April of 1944, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt have occupied the White House for more than eleven years. The President is secretly convalescing in South Carolina from a recently diagnosed bout of congestive heart failure while the war rages overseas and his family is under press scrutiny at home. Despite his failing health, FDR has ambitious postwar plans for his country: to see the horrific struggle through to victory, and then to bring the United...

Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt are the most prominent members of one of the most important families in American history. Theodore and Franklin occupy the White House for nineteen of the first forty-five years of the twentieth century, years during which much of the modern world - and the modern state - is created. They share an unfeigned love for people and politics and a willingness to defy class prejudices to help create a true democracy...

Profiles Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt, three members of the most prominent and influential family in American politics. It is the first time in a major documentary television series that their individual stories have been interwoven into a single narrative. This seven-part, 14 hour film follows the Roosevelts for more than a century, from Theodore's birth in 1858 to Eleanor's death in 1962. Over the course of these years, Theodore would...