This award-winning film by Ken Burns recaptures the drama, struggles, and personal tragedies behind the greatest of all achievements of America's industrial age, THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE. Largest bridge of the era, its construction entailed enormous problems and ingenious solutions. Witness the human heroics behind the bridge that seized America's imagination in the 1880s. Discover the enduring charm and beauty of a granite-and-steel masterpiece.

This episode opens with a dramatic account of the turning point of the war: the battle of Gettysburg - the greatest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere. For three days 150,000 will fight to the death in the gentle Pennsylvania countryside culminating in Pickett's legendary charge. This extended episode then goes on to chronicle the fall of Vicksburg, the New York draft riots, the first use of black troops, and the western battles at Chickamauga...

The episode begins with the presidential campaign of 1864 that set Abraham Lincoln against his old commanding general, George McClellan. The stakes are nothing less than the survival of the union itself: with Grant and Sherman stalled at Petersburg and Atlanta, opinion in the north has turned strongly against Lincoln and the war. But eleventh hour union victories at Mobile Bay, Atlanta, and the Shenandoah Valley, tilt the election to Lincoln, and...

1862 saw the birth of modern warfare and the transformation of Lincoln's war to preserve the Union into a war to emancipate the slaves. Episode two begins with the political infighting that threatened to swamp Lincoln's administration and then follows Union General George McClellan's ill-fated campaign on the Virginia peninsula. The episode follows the battle of ironclad ships, camp life and the beginning of the end of slavery. Ulysses S. Grant's...

What caused the war? Beginning with an examination of slavery, this episode looks at the causes of the war and the burning questions of union and states' rights. John Brown leads a rebellion at Harper's Ferry, Abraham Lincoln is elected president, Fort Sumter is fired upon and both sides rush to arms. Introducing the series' major figures — Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant — the episode concludes with the...

From Ken Burns, producer of THE CIVIL WAR, comes the story of radio's creation of radio and three men of genius, vision, and determination: Lee De Forest, a clergyman's flamboyant son; Edwin Howard Armstrong, a brilliant, withdrawn inventor; and David Sarnoff, a hard-driving Russian immigrant who created the world's most powerful communications company. This film evokes the lives of three men whose work profoundly transformed modern America.

As one of America's founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson is considered by some to be the man of the millennium, analogous to the progress of the first 200 years of American history. He was a man of freedom and expansion, yet he had the restraint that is necessary to succeed with that freedom--the commitment to becoming learned and skilled. As the third president of the United States, Jefferson was responsible for doubling the size of the country with...

Amid the hard times of the Depression new dances, the Lindy Hop and Swing, caught on at the dance halls of New York even as the jobless lined the streets and drought ruined Midwest farms. Jazz, during 1929 through 1935, lifted the nation's spirit. Record sales boomed while Armstrong became a major entertainer as singer, trumpeter, band leader, radio and film performer. Ellington's elegance, compositions, brilliant band films and recordings created...

Jazz is born in New Orleans at the turn of the century emerging from several forms of music including ragtime, marching bands, work songs, spirituals, creole music, funeral parade music and above all, the blues. Musicians profiled here who advanced early jazz are Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Freddie Keppard, and musicians of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.