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African Americans Social life and customs Depressions 1929 United States Music 20th century History and criticism Musical form Power (Social sciences) United States Style, Musical United States Economic conditions 19th century United States History 1901-1953 United States Politics and government 1901-1953 United States Territorial expansionFilter By Subjects
African Americans Social life and customs Depressions 1929 United States Music 20th century History and criticism Musical form Power (Social sciences) United States Style, Musical United States Economic conditions 19th century United States History 1901-1953 United States Politics and government 1901-1953 United States Territorial expansionSummary: The nation is in love with progress, and innovations include steamboats, the Erie Canal, and the first railroads. The Industrial Revolution brings Americans new leisure and personal freedom - but there is a dark side to the story for factory workers and women. Reformers begin to rail against horrendous conditions, while people like Sojourner Truth and Elizabeth Cady Stanton rally for equal rights.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2002
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Summary: Also known as the Mexican - American war, it was an armed conflict from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S. annexation of Texas, which Mexico considered part of its territory despite the 1836 Texas Revolution. Follow this program as American forces invade and conquer New Mexico, California, and parts of what is currently northern Mexico, while another American army captures Mexico City...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: While America was founded as a free land in which people could live out their own destinies, it came at a terrible cost to Native Americans. The Pilgrims laid the groundwork for religious freedom, while the Puritan-led Salem Witch Trials were a frightening reminder of superstition and intolerance. The nation's population migrates westward, emboldened by a new philosophy called Manifest Destiny;...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2002
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Summary: America became a nation just as a revolution in commerce and industry swept the Western world. This program explores the economic growth of the United States in the context of rising friction between the North and South-over the moral issue of slavery, but also over the differences between industrial power and an agricultural economy focused on cotton. With the election of Abraham Lincoln,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: The drama of America's unstoppable growth continues with wagon trains and cattle barons headed westward, confronting Native American Indians as well as the interests of the Spanish and French. Resulting increases in Westward migration and the discovery of gold and other natural resources are covered in this program, along with the rise of the steamboat and a new era of commerce and industry.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: This episode of Biography looks at Brigham Young, a settler in the American west and President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Known as the 'Mormon Moses', Young followed founder Joseph Smith as head of the Mormon church.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: No sport is more American than baseball, but, contrary to popular opinion, the game likely predates the birth of our nation and has substantial roots overseas. This program explores baseball's origins as a folk pastime and depicts the early phases of its complex evolution. Refuting the myth that Civil War general Abner Doubleday single-handedly invented the game, the film looks at parallels in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: This episode of The Conquerors profiles John C. Fremont, military officer and explorer, known as 'The Great Pathfinder'. Moving to the territory of California, he found adventure leading an expedition, and then upon becoming a U.S. Senator, in representing the new state.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: The flowering of the Jazz Age is a tale of two great cities, Chicago and New York, and two extraordinary artists whose achievements spanned nearly three-quarters of a century. Louis Armstrong was a fatherless waif who grew up on the rough streets of New Orleans, developing his extraordinary gifts before moving to Chicago, where his transcendent sound inspired a new generation of musicians. Duke...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2000
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Summary: The story of jazz begins in New Orleans, 19th-century America's most cosmopolitan city. Here, in the 1890s, African-American artists created a new music out of ragtime syncopations, Caribbean rhythms, marching band instrumentation, and the soulful feeling of the blues. This program introduces the pioneers of this revolutionary art form: half-mad cornet player Buddy Bolden, pianist Jelly Roll...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2000
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Summary: This program from the Famous Composers series offers an overview of the life and work of composer and pianist Johannes Brahms beginning with an introduction to Brahms' family and hometown, the nineteenth century seaport city of Hamburg. The film follows Brahms' musical education with teachers Otto Cossel and Eduard Marxsen, his days of playing in bars and teaching to earn money, and his...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: With farms and factories falling victim to the Great Depression, jazz was one of the few American industries poised for explosive growth. This program explores the art form during the first half of the decade, a period in which New York City usurped Chicago as America's jazz capital, Louis Armstrong revolutionized Broadway song craft, and Chick Webb forged his big-band sound at the Savoy...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: Amid the rise of suburbia, television, rock 'n' roll, and the baby boom generation, jazz lost a beloved and burned-out star: Billie Holiday. But the music still had its two guiding lights. In 1956, the first year Elvis topped the charts, Duke Ellington recaptured the nation's ear with a performance at the Newport Jazz Festival. The next year, Louis Armstrong made headlines when he condemned...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: As the Depression dragged on, jazz came as close as it ever would to being America's popular music. Now it was often called swing, and, as this program illustrates, it became the defining music of a generation. Suddenly, jazz bandleaders were the new matinee idols, with Benny Goodman hailed as the "King of Swing," while teenagers jitterbugged just as hard to the music of his rivals: Tommy...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: Compiled by author, teacher, and curriculum advisor Ben Walsh, this program features 11 extracts on the Cuban missile crisis from various film archive sources. Clip selections and Walsh's commentary are organized around the following three topics: the build-up to the crisis, the actions and decisions of President John F. Kennedy in confronting the threat, and the outcome of the conflict in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: When America entered World War II, jazz became part of the arsenal, with bandleaders like Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw taking their swing to troops overseas. For many black Americans, however, that sound had a hollow ring. Segregated at home and in uniform, they found themselves fighting for liberties their own country denied them-as when authorities padlocked the integrated Savoy Ballroom....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: The stock market surged through the 1920s and jazz was everywhere in America. Now, for the first time, soloists and singers took center stage, transforming the music with distinctive voices and unique stories. This program introduces Bessie Smith, Empress of the Blues, whose songs eased the pain of life for millions of black Americans; Bix Beiderbecke, the first great white jazz star, inspired...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: The social tensions underlying America's postwar prosperity were reflected in the broken rhythms and dissonant melodies of bebop-and in the troubled life of Charlie Parker. Nicknamed "Bird," Parker demonstrated ideas and techniques as overwhelming for musicians of his generation as Louis Armstrong's had been a quarter-century before. But Parker wasn't the only bebop innovator. Dizzy Gillespie...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: Dixieland, swing, bebop, modal, free, avant-garde, these were some of the terms critics used during the 1960s to categorize the diverse manifestations of jazz music. As for the artists themselves, many were desperate for work and headed for Europe, including bebop saxophone master Dexter Gordon. At home, jazz sought relevance. During the Civil Rights struggle it became a voice of protest, while...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: As the 1930s drew to a close, swing-mania was still going strong, but some fans were saying success had made the music too predictable. Their ears were tuned to a new sound, suffused with the blues-the Kansas City sound of Count Basie's band, which ignited new musical adventures. By 1938, Basie and his men were helping Benny Goodman bring jazz to Carnegie Hall. Soon Basie's lead saxophonist,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: The Battle of Saratoga in 1777 conclusively decided the fate of British General John Burgoyne's army in the American Revolutionary War and is generally regarded as a turning point in the war. During this program viewers face the questions that could win or lose the battle from the viewpoint of the general himself.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: It's a little play with all the big subjects in it, wrote Thornton Wilder in a 1937 letter to Gertrude Stein about what has become his most renowned and frequently performed work. Set at the turn of the 20th century, Our Town reveals the ordinary lives of the people in the small town of Grover's Corners, U.S.A. The play's themes of love and marriage, the transitory nature of existence, and the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: The most charming small mammals you'll ever meet team up with the world's most exasperating amphibian to pursue their merry adventures in this adaptation based on Kenneth Grahame's beloved children's classic The Wind in the Willows. This dramatization dispenses with animation and relies instead on the striking animal instincts of some very talented actors: Matt Lucas as gadget-crazed Mr. Toad;...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This poignant adaptation of Andrea Levy's award-winning novel Small Island explores the lives of two couples, one Jamaican and the other English, whose worlds intertwine in post-World War II Britain at a turning point in the long relationship between the two countries. It is a story of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010