The National Parks: America's Best Idea Produced by Ken Burns PBS. premieres Sept. 27
On the Tube
Late September launches the latest from documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, a new 12-hour, six-part epic on PBS that tracks our sprawling park system for 150 years from its birth. The central thesis: that national parks for the use of everyone is as radical an idea as the Declaration of Independence and as American as baseball and jazz. A raft of expected (John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt) and offbeat (Japanese immigrant photographer George Masa, wealthy forest ranger George Melendez Wright) characters appear in a Burns-style blend of history, travelogue and nature photography.
* This season also brings the Great Depression back to vivid life on top-notch PBS American Experience episodes, laced as usual with awesome archival footage. Hoover Dam tracks the engineering marvel's tortuous path from concept to completion and ironic aftermaths. The Crash of 1929 richly details the joyride and the smash-up. With poignant, pungent detail. Surviving the Dust Bowl shows that most Dust Bowlers stayed put. And Seablscuit delivers the un-Hollywood version of the little horse and crippled jock who gave the battered country hope. -Gene Santoro
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