USA Historical Documentaries

Thomas Jefferson is a two-part portrait of one of the most fascinating and complicated figures ever to walk across America’s public stage – our enigmatic and brilliant third president. Thomas Jefferson embodies within his own life the most profound contradictions of American history: as the author of our most sacred document, the Declaration of Independence, he gave voice to our fervent desire for freedom, but he also owned more than 150 human beings and never saw fit to free them. Jefferson also made himself into a true renaissance man – a scholar, a philosopher, a diplomat, an aesthete, and an architect. As a young man, he was transformed by the fire of the Enlightenment into America’s most articulate voice for human liberty. Torn between his desire for a serene family life at Monticello and his passion for politics, Jefferson endured ceaseless, heartrending personal loss. As President, he helped create the first American political party, and with the Louisiana Purchase, more than doubled the size of the new nation. Jefferson’s last years were spent founding the University of Virginia and reestablishing his friendship, after decades of estrangement, from his onetime rival John Adams. His influence on and vision for our country reverberates to this day.

The West, a nine-part series, chronicles the turbulent history of one of the most extraordinary landscapes on earth – a mythic landscape, simultaneously enticing and forbidding, filled with stories of both heartbreaking tragedy and undying hope. Beginning in the era when the land belonged only to Native Americans and ending in the 20th century, the film is populated by unforgettable historical characters, some famous and others relatively unknown – from gold seekers to cowboys to homesteaders to Indian leaders – whose competing dreams transformed the land, and turned the West into a lasting symbol of the nation itself, a tragic, inspiring intersection where the best of us met the worst of us and nothing was left unchanged.

The West, a nine-part series, chronicles the turbulent history of one of the most extraordinary landscapes on earth – a mythic landscape, simultaneously enticing and forbidding, filled with stories of both heartbreaking tragedy and undying hope. Beginning in the era when the land belonged only to Native Americans and ending in the 20th century, the film is populated by unforgettable historical characters, some famous and others relatively unknown – from gold seekers to cowboys to homesteaders to Indian leaders – whose competing dreams transformed the land, and turned the West into a lasting symbol of the nation itself, a tragic, inspiring intersection where the best of us met the worst of us and nothing was left unchanged.

In 1857, en route to New York from California, the steamship Central America vanished in a killer storm off North Carolina's coast.

The West, a nine-part series, chronicles the turbulent history of one of the most extraordinary landscapes on earth – a mythic landscape, simultaneously enticing and forbidding, filled with stories of both heartbreaking tragedy and undying hope. Beginning in the era when the land belonged only to Native Americans and ending in the 20th century, the film is populated by unforgettable historical characters, some famous and others relatively unknown – from gold seekers to cowboys to homesteaders to Indian leaders – whose competing dreams transformed the land, and turned the West into a lasting symbol of the nation itself, a tragic, inspiring intersection where the best of us met the worst of us and nothing was left unchanged.

The West, a nine-part series, chronicles the turbulent history of one of the most extraordinary landscapes on earth – a mythic landscape, simultaneously enticing and forbidding, filled with stories of both heartbreaking tragedy and undying hope. Beginning in the era when the land belonged only to Native Americans and ending in the 20th century, the film is populated by unforgettable historical characters, some famous and others relatively unknown – from gold seekers to cowboys to homesteaders to Indian leaders – whose competing dreams transformed the land, and turned the West into a lasting symbol of the nation itself, a tragic, inspiring intersection where the best of us met the worst of us and nothing was left unchanged.

The West, a nine-part series, chronicles the turbulent history of one of the most extraordinary landscapes on earth – a mythic landscape, simultaneously enticing and forbidding, filled with stories of both heartbreaking tragedy and undying hope. Beginning in the era when the land belonged only to Native Americans and ending in the 20th century, the film is populated by unforgettable historical characters, some famous and others relatively unknown – from gold seekers to cowboys to homesteaders to Indian leaders – whose competing dreams transformed the land, and turned the West into a lasting symbol of the nation itself, a tragic, inspiring intersection where the best of us met the worst of us and nothing was left unchanged.

The West, a nine-part series, chronicles the turbulent history of one of the most extraordinary landscapes on earth – a mythic landscape, simultaneously enticing and forbidding, filled with stories of both heartbreaking tragedy and undying hope. Beginning in the era when the land belonged only to Native Americans and ending in the 20th century, the film is populated by unforgettable historical characters, some famous and others relatively unknown – from gold seekers to cowboys to homesteaders to Indian leaders – whose competing dreams transformed the land, and turned the West into a lasting symbol of the nation itself, a tragic, inspiring intersection where the best of us met the worst of us and nothing was left unchanged.

The West, a nine-part series, chronicles the turbulent history of one of the most extraordinary landscapes on earth – a mythic landscape, simultaneously enticing and forbidding, filled with stories of both heartbreaking tragedy and undying hope. Beginning in the era when the land belonged only to Native Americans and ending in the 20th century, the film is populated by unforgettable historical characters, some famous and others relatively unknown – from gold seekers to cowboys to homesteaders to Indian leaders – whose competing dreams transformed the land, and turned the West into a lasting symbol of the nation itself, a tragic, inspiring intersection where the best of us met the worst of us and nothing was left unchanged.

The West, a nine-part series, chronicles the turbulent history of one of the most extraordinary landscapes on earth – a mythic landscape, simultaneously enticing and forbidding, filled with stories of both heartbreaking tragedy and undying hope. Beginning in the era when the land belonged only to Native Americans and ending in the 20th century, the film is populated by unforgettable historical characters, some famous and others relatively unknown – from gold seekers to cowboys to homesteaders to Indian leaders – whose competing dreams transformed the land, and turned the West into a lasting symbol of the nation itself, a tragic, inspiring intersection where the best of us met the worst of us and nothing was left unchanged.