American Experience

Revisit this pivotal 1950 Korean War battle through the eyewitness accounts of participants. A harrowing story of bloody combat and heroic survival in the first major military clash of the Cold War.

A chilling nightmare plays out at a Titan II missile complex in Arkansas in September, 1980. A worker accidentally drops a socket, puncturing the fuel tank of an intercontinental ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead in our arsenal, an incident which ignites a series of feverish efforts to avoid a deadly disaster.

She set out to save a species...us. An intimate portrait of the woman whose groundbreaking books revolutionized our relationship to the natural world.

The dramatic story of the country's first subway in late-19th-century Boston, Massachusetts.

On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh, a former soldier deeply influenced by the literature and ideas of the radical right, parked a Ryder truck with a five-ton fertilizer bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City. 168 people were killed and 675 were injured in the blast. Oklahoma City traces the events — including the deadly encounters between American citizens and law enforcement at Ruby Ridge and Waco — that led McVeigh to commit the worst act of domestic terrorism in American history.

A riveting account of the event that helped give rise to the modern American militia movement.

Explore America's tortured, nearly three-year journey to war. In August 1914, a war unprecedented in size and violence broke out on the European continent. Ever the idealistic diplomat, Wilson vowed to keep his country out of "the Great War." His neutrality was supported but reports from Europe began to challenge America's delicate position. From behind the battle lines came reports detailing German atrocities in Belgium and France: history's first chemical attack and the sinking of the British liner Lusitania, killing 128 Americans. But Wilson stood firm, asserting that America would not fight - this was not her war. Despite Wilson's pleas, American men and women, volunteered in the hospitals and on the fighting fields of France, and by 1916, there was a growing sense that the war was coming closer to home. On April 2, Wilson asked a joint session of Congress for a declaration of war against Germany, proclaiming that "the world must be made safe for democracy.

Chart America's entry into the conflict, examining the breathtaking speed of mobilization and the profound transformations required if America was to play a central role in the Great War. In 1917, the U.S. was deeply divided about going to war. Wilson hired former journalist George Creel to lead an unprecedented propaganda campaign to support the war. But for those who resisted the patriotic fervor, the consequences could be severe. Repressive legislation clamped down on free speech and almost any form of dissent. There was rampant vigilantism, and deep racial divisions still existed. Although controversial at first, in the end, more than four million men served in America’s first mass conscripted army, their ranks reflected the teeming racial and socio-economic diversity of 20th-century America. In the summer of 1918, the Americans arrived in France just as the Germans were on the outskirts of Paris. And soon, the wave of death and misery that Wilson had so feared was coming to pass.

Chart the ways in which the bloodiest battle in American history, and the ensuing peace, forever changed a president and a nation. In the fall of 1918, the deadly flu swept through cities at home and at the front. When the tide of war turned, the Germans wanted a cease-fire on Wilson's terms. On November 11, 1918, the war was over, but for Wilson, the last fight remained. He negotiated the terms of the peace treaty and won the world over to his League of Nations, but felled by a stroke, he failed to convince the Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, with tragic consequences. While Wilson had heralded the triumph of American values abroad, many were worried about democracy at home; with citizens persecuted, "aliens" interned, and cities torn apart by race riots. The Great War changed the country forever. African Americans who had fought in the war found ways to continue to push for change. Women's suffrage gained converts, including Wilson. And America stepped onto the world stage.

In January 1967, San Francisco youth descended on Golden Gate Park for a Human Be-In. The media flocked to the event, offering a window into the world of Haight-Ashbury and inspiring even more young people to join. Summer of Love is a striking picture of the summer of 1967 — from the utopian beginnings, when peace and love prevailed, to the chaos and drug use that ultimately signaled the end.

The Utopian beginnings of peace and love prevailed, and ended in chaos.