Bill Moyers

This program with Bill Moyers continues the examination of the powerful forces that have contributed to the dismantling of the American economy. Among those interviewed are Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Fear of Falling; Susan Lee, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute; and Ed Rubenstein, an economic analyst at the National Review. In addition to these experts, the program features workers who have lost their jobs in manufacturing and examines...

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 Depression-era shift to the left in this video. He shows how the rapid...

Hollywood icon John Huston shares numerous insights and experiences in this classic Bill Moyers interview, filmed five years before the director's death in 1987. Answering questions on art and personal adversity at his secluded Mexican villa, Huston also allows Moyers to join him behind the camera during the shooting of Annie. Topics include the many false starts that prefaced Huston's career; his thoughts about directing his father in Treasure of...

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 and hard-fought legal assault on the fortresses of segregation....

As this Bill Moyers program makes clear, television became another member of the family in the 1960s, both reflecting and influencing the era. The times were chaotic and TV whirled us into that chaos while also holding up a mirror to it: the assassination and funeral of John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the Apollo moon landing, the saga of the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. So swiftly was change upon us in the decade of the 60s,...

This Bill Moyers program features news correspondent Richard Strout, who covered Washington and the White House from 1925 to his retirement in 1984. Strout's reports, filed for the Christian Science Monitor and The New Republic, are studied here not only as chronicles of American history but as milestones circumscribing our nation's capital-and its evolution from a "small town" to the nerve center of the free world. Strout speaks with Bill Moyers...

The 1950s in America were a time of nostalgia and neurosis. Factories poured out goods, the dollar was powerful, and the United States - filled with the heady optimism of victory in World War II - believed that it could politically, culturally, and militarily lead the world. But the decade also saw the solidification of the Iron Curtain in Europe, the entrenchment of Communism in China, years of so-called police action in Korea, and a Red Scare that...

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 in original settings, the world of 20th-century black...

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 actually coined the term "public relations"-about the science...

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, Tennessee. Presented by Bill Moyers, the video explores the...