American Experience

- Season 1

(1988)

An account of the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the subsequent effort to rebuild.

It starts with a live radio broadcast from the Bikini Atoll a few days before it is annihilated by a nuclear test. Shows great footage from these times and tells the story of the US Navy Sailors who were exposed to radioactive fallout. One interviewed sailor suffered grotesquely swollen limbs and he is shown being interviewed with enormous left arm and hand.

A profile of historian Angie Debo and her exposure of the governmental conspiracy to steal mineral-rich lands from their tribal owners.

Journalist Eric Sevareid recounts his experiences growing up during the Great Depression and World War II.

Know what this is about? Be the first one to add a plot.

A look at modern-day cowboys in the Wyoming Rockies.

Filmmaker Robert Drew updates his 1963 documentary Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (1963) which followed the confrontation between President Kennedy and Alabama governor George Wallace.

The life of Geronimo, as told by the Chiricahua Apaches.

Writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans revisit the Alabama tenant system depicted in their 1936 book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men".

Know what this is about? Be the first one to add a plot.

The story of Father Charles Coughlin who, during the Depression, used the radio to protest against what he saw as society's ills.

The historical events of nineteenth-century America as depicted in the quilts of the country's women.

An exploration of the Native Americans of 1830s western America, as seen through the eyes of European travelers Prince Maximilian of Bavaria and Swiss artist Karl Bodmer.

A profile on American writer Eudora Welty.

Documentary about architect Robert Moses who is responsible for public works projects like the Lincoln Center and the United Nations in New York.

The story of Emeline Bachelder, an early 19th-century New Englander who married a younger man - only to discover that he was the son she had give up when she was fourteen.