Summary: In 1908, the first Model T rolled off the assembly line, quickly asserting itself as a dream machine that would take America down the highway and into the future. Bill Moyers shows how that future represented not only a new landscape bustling with high-speed transport and travel, but a new vision of ourselves. He uses film clips, photographs, music, and poetry to trace America's transformation...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Conventional wisdom enshrines the 1920s as the decade that roared-a time in which Americans kicked up their heels to the Charleston and went for one long joyride before the Wall Street crash of 1929. As this Bill Moyers program illustrates, those things did happen, but so did many others-not all of them fondly remembered. Nineteen Americans who lived through those years talk about their lives...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: The 20th century began with enormous hopes for a future made safe and humane by technology. Although it realized some of these hopes, the century neared its end under the shadow of superweapons that still threaten the earth with annihilation. In this program, Bill Moyers traces the evolution of three instruments that enabled combatants to mass-produce death-the machine gun, the submarine, and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: In 1932, the United States had almost no provision by which the federal government could offer a helping hand to the victims of economic collapse. But with a staggering number of Americans out of work, soup kitchens and private charities were simply overwhelmed. Enter Franklin D. Roosevelt-a leader ready to act, armed with a New Deal for the country. Bill Moyers explores America's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: No single force has changed American politics more than television-especially the television commercial. In this program, Bill Moyers examines the phenomenon of the "30-second president" and the role of advertising in 20th-century American politics. The video features an interview with Rosser Reeves, an advertising executive who worked on early political television campaigns for Dwight D....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Danger has always surrounded the coal miner's profession, but in the early years of the Colorado coal fields, it was almost as risky for a worker to stay above ground and face the wrath of the company as it was to toil in the tunnels below. This Bill Moyers program presents the memories of the people who worked those mines, freeing the rocks, metals, and minerals on which much of 20th-century...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: In 1911, the first newsreels flickered in America's nickelodeons. In the mid-1960s, they vanished from movie theaters as nightly television newscasts came to dominate visual journalism. In between, newsreels grew into a unique 20th-century institution that informed and entertained whole generations. In this program, Bill Moyers conducts a tour of the cultural and political landscape so...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Out of the tradition of the great 19th-century European trade exhibitions came a 20th-century American phenomenon, one that provided recreation, inspiration, and what amounted to a cultural barometer-the World's Fair. At the time this classic program was produced, the United States had hosted nine of them, from the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 to the sprawling 1982 celebration in Knoxville,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: The growth of mass communication provided a new understanding of ways to manipulate images and influence popular opinion, giving birth to the concept of public relations. In this program, Bill Moyers examines the public-relations campaign designed by Ivy Lee in 1914 to improve the image of John D. Rockefeller. He also talks with Edward Bernays-the man who helped immortalize Thomas Edison and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1984
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Summary: For African-Americans, the 20th century was fraught with contrasts. There was the glowing promise of equality in the nation's charters and there was the actual bigotry that shadowed and shrank that promise. In this program, Bill Moyers is joined by a distinguished couple who have long spoken for black aspirations-Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. Together they re-create, in dramatic dialogue and often...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: The outbreak of World War II saw two motion picture experts from Germany and the United States battle each other with as much ferocity as any army or navy. Their respective missions: to ignite a public desire to wage and win a global conflict. This Bill Moyers program contains an interview with Fritz Hippler, chief filmmaker for the Nazi Party. Hippler unrepentantly claims to have spoken to the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: The year 1954 can now be seen as a clarifying point of convergence in American history. Among other things, it was the year that brought the Supreme Court's decision to outlaw racial segregation in the schools of the United States. In this program, Bill Moyers, Ossie Davis, and Ruby Dee tell the story of how the New Deal, World War II, and postwar social changes set the stage for a long-awaited...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Innovation enabled the United States to take on the mantle of world leadership-most importantly, innovation in military technology. But among the great minds that drove American innovation, using science to make war sometimes led to questions, dilemmas, and even second thoughts. In this program, Bill Moyers presents a profile of I. I. Rabi, winner of the 1944 Nobel Prize in physics and an early...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010