American Experience

The career of America's most famous and controversial nuclear physicist and his fall from grace during the Cold War.

The human story behind the massive American effort to eliminate the debilitating effects of the polio virus and the truly untested nature of Salk's original vaccine.

On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. Over the next twelve days, as a fractured nation mourned, the largest manhunt ever attempted closed in on his assassin, the renowned 26-year-old actor John Wilkes Booth. The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln recounts this great American drama: two tumultuous months when the joy of peace was shattered by the heartache of Lincoln’s death.

A 1951 murder by a Mexican-American laborer brings into question the legal status of Hispanics in the United States.

A chronicle of the early relations and negotiations between the tribes of what became known as New England and the European settlers.

The story of a great Native American alliance to counter the 1800s US westward expansion from the Atlantic coast.

Perspectives on the forced move of the Cherokee from the southeast to the newly established "Indian Territory" of what is now Oklahoma

A portrait of the Chiracahua Apache who was one of the last Native Americans to continue armed resistance in North America.

Rebellious Lakota and allies take up arms in 1973 and force an examination of the failures of the reservation system in the United States.

Based on eight years of continued prosperity, presidents and economists alike confidently predicted that America would soon enter a time when there would be no more poverty, no more depressions -- a "New Era" when everyone could be rich.

The story of the farmers who came to the Southern Plains of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas dreaming of prosperity, and lived through ten years of drought, dust, disease and death.