WGBH Educational Foundation.
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English
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Relying heavily on the correspondence between the second president, John Adams, and his wife, Abigail Adams, this joint biography sheds light on the characters of two people who played crictical roles in the history of the United States and on the tumultuous times through which they lived. He was a participant in the Continental Congress and a wartime emissary to France as well as becoming the second President of the United States during its fledging...
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English
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Can the power of music make the brain come alive? Dr. Oliver Sacks, author of Musicophilia: tales of music and the brain, is involved with this study as Nova follows four individuals: Matt Giordano (United States), Derek Paravicini (England), Anne Barker (Ireland), and Tony Cicoria (United States) to investigate music's strange, surprising, and still unexplained power over the human mind. While these extraordinary stories offer examples of music's...
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"When allied troops invaded Germany and liberated Nazi death camps at the end of World War II, they found unspeakable horrors that still haunt the world's conscience. In 1945, British and American film crews accompanying the troops liberating the camps captured these atrocities firsthand. The resulting film directed in part by Alfred Hitchcock but never finished, was discovered by Frontline in 1984 in the archives of the Imperial War Museum. Sixty...
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John Jasper is haunted and restless. Unhappily settled as choirmaster in the provincial cathedral town of Cloisterham, Jasper finds himself striving for the divine in his music even as he struggles against madness brought on by ennui and opiates. Aware of his unraveling, Jasper believes his salvation may be found in the arms of Rosa, his prized pupil. His only obstacle is her fiance, Edwin Drood - Jasper's nephew.
7) Truman
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English
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The story of the unlikely rise of a gritty American original, Harry Truman. He was a farmer, a bankrupt businessman, an unknown politician from Missouri who suddenly found himself president. Of all the men who had held America's highest office, Harry Truman was the least prepared, but he would prove to be a surprise. Facing some of the biggest crises of the century, Truman would end the war with Germany, use the atomic bomb against Japan, confront...
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Within a single generation, digital media and the World Wide Web have transformed virtually every aspect of modern culture, from the way we learn and work to the ways in which we socialize and even conduct war. But is the technology moving faster than we can adapt to it? And is our 24/7 wired world causing us to lose as much as we've gained? This in-depth exploration of what it means to be human in a 21st-century digital world continues a line...
10) The Gilded Age
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English
Description
A compelling and complex story of one of the most convulsive and transformative eras in American history. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, the U.S. population doubled in the span of a single generation, national wealth expanded, and two classes rose simultaneously, separated by a gulf of experience and circumstance that was unprecedented in American life.
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John Brown, considered the father of American terrorism, was an inspiration to the Civil Rights movement. He was a farmer, a warrior, a family man and an avenging angel. More than 150 years after his execution, questions swirl around John Brown: was he a madman or a martyr? A bloodthirsty fanatic or a great American hero? Dramatic reenactments trace John Brown's obsessive battle against human bondage.
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"Nova takes viewers on a fascinating quest with a group of pioneering mathematicians determined to decipher the rules that govern fractal geometry. Their remarkable findings are deepening our understanding of nature and stimulating a new wave of scientific, medical and artistic innovation, stretching from the ecology of the rainforest to fashion design."--Container.
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A deft politician and skillful diplomat, TR's magnetic personality and genius for publicity made him a legend in his own time. Through archival footage and interviews with historians, this is an engaging portrait of the private man and the president who created the modern American presidency.
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The modern music scene was created in 1969, at Woodstock. Half a million fans, dozens of artists, and the politics of the times came together as a big bang moment that eventually would generate billions of dollars. But over the last twenty years, MTV, compact discs, corporate consolidation, Internet piracy, and greed have contributed to a perfect storm for the recording industry. Frontline examines how the business that has provided the soundtrack...
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The most autobiographical of Dickens' works, David Copperfield often echoes the writer's own life. It tells a moving story of David's journey from birth to maturity, a journey which inextricably links his life with some of Dickens' most colorful and extraordinary families.
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Inspired by the biblical account of the splendor of his temples and palaces adorned in glittering gold and copper, countless treasure-seekers have set off in search of King Solomon's mines. Yet to date, the evidence supporting the existence of Solomon's mines and other early kingdoms in the Bible has been highly controversial. In fact, there is so little physical evidence of the kings who ruled Israel and Edom that many contend that they are no more...
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English
Description
Explores the complex alchemy that accounts for the enduring celebrity of America's most famous inventor, offering new perspectives on the man and his milieu. And illuminating not only the true nature of invention, but its role in turn-of-the-century America's rush into the future.