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Hoover Dam

Aired January 18, 1999

During the Great Depression, Americans built the Hoover Dam, overcoming technical challenges to erect one of the greatest engineering works in history.

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At the dawn of the Cold War, the United States initiated a top secret program in New Mexico to build a weapon even more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Japan. This program aired in January, 1999.

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America 1900

Aired November 18, 1998

America 1900 presents a comprehensive picture of what life was like in the United States at the turn of the century.

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Riding the Rails

Aired May 23, 2013

At the height of the Great Depression, more than a quarter million teenagers were living on the road in America, many criss-crossing the country by illegally hopping freight trains. This film tells the story of ten of these teenage hobos — from the reasons they left home to what they experienced — all within the context of depression-era America.

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Surviving the Dust Bowl

Aired August 31, 2022 | 53 min

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.

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Surviving the Dust Bowl (español)

Aired August 31, 2022 | 53 min

La historia de los granjeros que vinieron a las Llanuras del Sur de Texas, Oklahoma y Kansas soñando con tener prosperidad y terminaron viviendo diez años de sequía, polvo, enfermedad y muerte.

Reagan

Aired October 3, 2024 | 3 hrs 46 min

A passionate ideologue who preached a simple gospel of lower taxes, less government, and anti-communism, Ronald Reagan left the White House one of the most popular presidents of the 20th century — and one of the most controversial.

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Reagan (español)

Aired October 3, 2024 | 3 hrs 46 min

Una mirada a la vida de Reagan a través del testimonio de familiares, amigos, historiadores y biógrafos, Reagan fue producida con un acceso sin precedentes a la familia Reagan, incluyendo a Nancy Reagan y tres de los cuatro hijos de Reagan, el biógrafo Edmund Morris, miembros del círculo político íntimo de Reagan, su "Gabinete de California", y sus homólogos en el escenario mundial, incluyendo a la exprimera ministra británica Margaret Thatcher y al líder soviético Mijaíl Gorbachov.

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Influenza 1918

Aired January 2, 2018 | 60 min

It was the worst epidemic in American history, killing over 600,000 — until it disappeared as mysteriously as it had begun.

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Mr. Miami Beach

Aired February 2, 1998 | 53 min

A master promoter, Carl Fisher created Miami Beach on a narrow spit of Florida swamp land, a tropical paradise of sand and palm trees, then masterminded a dazzling sales campaign.

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A Midwife's Tale

Aired January 19, 1998

An innovative dramatic film based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning story of Martha Ballard, a midwife and mother living in the wilds of Maine during the chaotic decades following the American Revolution. In a sparsely written diary, Ballard recorded her daily struggle against poverty, disease, domestic abuse and social turmoil. Two hundred years later, her world is painstakingly recreated by a historian seeking to understand eighteenth century America through a woman's eyes.

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Truman

Aired October 5, 1997 | 4 hrs 11 min

An unknown politician from Missouri who suddenly found himself president, Harry Truman was the least prepared of all the men who had held the highest office, but he would prove to be a surprise — the unlikely rise of a gritty American original.

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