A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 1996 Little, Brown and Company (a division of Hachette Book Group) On September 1, 1996, New York-based Little, Brown and Company published The West: An Illustrated History,  the companion volume to the Public Broadcasting Service's documentary miniseries The West: A Film by Stephen Ives , a project that was conceived and produced by Ken Burns . Written by historian Geoffrey C. Ward ( A First Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt ), The West: An Illustrated History is a lavishly illustrated and extremely readable history of America's westward expansion. starting with the arrival of the first Europeans in what is now the state of Texas and ending with the "taming of the West" in the 20th Century. The West: An Illustrated History follows the format of Ward's previous companion books for Burns' The Civil War (1990) and Baseball (1994): it is divided into eight chapters, one for each episode of The West in its broadcast edition. Comple...

On November 23, 2012, the 300 member stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired  The Central Park Five: A Film by Ken Burns & David McMahon & Sarah Burns, a two-hour-long documentary about the five teenaged black and Latino boys who were arrested and coerced into "confessions" by overzealous New York City detectives and prosecutors in the infamous 1989 "Central Park jogger case." Co-written and directed by documentarian Ken Burns, his daughter Sarah, and producer/director David McMahon, The Central Park Five is a searing and often infuriating case study of racial prejudice, sloppy police work, wrongful prosecution, and the role of mass media in perpetuating a miscarriage of justice. The film, which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival several months before it aired on PBS, tells the story of the long ordeal experienced by New York City teens Anton McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Kevin Wise, and Yusuf Salaam after a...

On November 23, 1997, the 300 member stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired The Reluctant Revolutionaries, the first episode of Liberty! The American Revolution, a six-part miniseries about the American Revolutionary War (1775-1781) and the birth of the United States of America. Written by Ronald Blumer ( The U.S. Constitution, Benjamin Franklin ) and co-directed by Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer ( Benjamin Franklin ), Liberty! is an earnest if a somewhat superficial attempt to explore America's War of Independence, its root causes. and its long-lasting impact on American, British, and world history. Featuring an all-star cast of Hollywood and Broadway stars (some of whom were just starting out) and a team of American and British historians, including Pauline Maier, Ron Hoffman, Gordon S. Wood, Richard Norton Smith, John Keegan, Jeremy Black, and Nicholas A.M. Rodger, the miniseries portrays the tumultuous 25-year period between 1763 and 1788 through a mix of li...

(C) 2017 Public Broadcasting Service & WGBH Boston On November 11, not too long ago, many countries around the world, including the major European powers and the United States of America, observed the Centennial of the end of the First World War, the bloody conflict that began in the summer of 1914 and ended on "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918. Fought primarily in Europe but also in other theaters around the world, this calamitous conflict claimed more than 30 million lives and sowed the seeds of other wars and global rivalries that continue to affect our lives in the 21st Century. At the time, the clash of arms that began with the assassination of an Austrian nobleman in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 went by many names. Optimists dubbed it "The war to end all wars" Some German writers called it Der Weltkrieg (the World War). Most people of the time, including Americans, simply called it "The Great War." In the 19...

On September 15, 1996, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired The People,  the first of eight episodes of director Stephen Ives' The West, a documentary about the United States' westward expansion and its effects on the history and culture of various peoples, including Americans, Native Americans, Spanish, French, Mexicans, and African Americans. Written by Geoffrey C. Ward and Dayton Duncan, The West  was executive produced by Ken Burns and produced under the aegis of Burns' Florentine Films and Ives' own Insignia Films production company. The West was narrated by actor Peter Coyote, who would later provide narration for later documentaries by Ken Burns, including The National Parks: America's Best Idea, Prohibition, and The Vietnam War.  Presented by Ken Burns and directed by Stephen Ives, this 12-hour film chronicles the epic saga of America's most vast and turbulent region, beginning before European settlement and continuing into the 20th Century. ...

On September 23, 2007, the 300-plus member stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired A Necessary War, the first of seven episodes of The War: A Ken Burns Film. Produced and directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, this 15-hours-long documentary series tells the story of how four American towns – Waterbury, CT, Mobile, AL, Luverne, MN, and Sacramento, CA – and their citizens experienced World War II. Written by Burns’ long-time collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward ( The Civil War, Baseball, Prohibition, and The Vietnam War ), The War is a bottom-to-top look at the Second World War as told by now-elderly members of what former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw calls “The Greatest Generation.” They are a cross-section of American society who experienced “the War” either in far-flung theaters of operation around the world or on the home front back in the States. Their stories – some of which are wryly humorous, and some of which are simply horrifying – reflect The War’s tagline: In ex...

(C) 2007 Sony BMG Music Entertainment/Sony Legacy Records and Florentine Films On September 26, 2007, 300 or so Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member stations in the United States aired A Necessary War, the first episode of Ken Burns’ seven-part   documentary series about the American experience in World War II. A bottom-up story told mainly by the residents – civilians and military veterans – of four quintessentially American towns (Waterbury, CT, Mobile, AL, Luverne, MN, and Sacramento, CA), The War: A Ken Burns Film – unlike British ITV’s The World at War – focuses primarily on personal experiences, with more intimate reminisces about the human experience of war instead of discussions about tactics, grand strategy, and Big Power politics. The War was originally scheduled to air on September 15, 2007, but protests by Latino and Native American advocates about Burns’ emphasis on stories told by white and African American interviewees at the expense of their narrative c...