Polish immigrants were the driving force behind Chicago's remarkable industrial growth. But they never achieved political cohesiveness, and while a million Poles now live in Chicago, their political power is not commensurate with the number of votes they cast.

From player salaries to performance-enhancing drugs, baseball's latter days have seen more than their share of controversy and confusion. This program covers the period from the 1994 player strike through the 2009 Major League season. Ample attention is given to the steroid problem, with a focus on Barry Bonds-both his stellar career and the scandal in which he became embroiled. But the film also discusses other major issues, such as how the sport...

On November 29, 1864, Col. John Chivington and 800 troops of the First Colorado Cavalry attacked a peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho camp-massacring women, children, and the elderly. This program introduces the Sand Creek atrocity to viewers in a way that written texts and dramatizations cannot. It consists of oral histories passed down from firsthand accounts through the generations and movingly conveyed by descendants of Native American eyewitnesses....

As with many historic American figures of the 19th century, Sojourner Truth's story is incomplete and somewhat mythical, a fact compounded by her having been born a slave. This detailed program traces the lifelong odyssey of a woman who literally walked out of bondage, changed her name in 1843, and traveled the country as an abolitionist and women's rights advocate. Along the way she would meet Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln and be further...

Martin Sheen-impersonating the voice of author Dashiell Hammett-narrates this compelling docudrama on immigrant labor and anti-war politics in 1917. As a young employee of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, Hammett spied for the Anaconda Copper Mining Company in Butte, Montana, during the height of labor struggles there. Using a wealth of archival footage, first-rate dramatizations, interviews with historical experts, and the personal recollections of...

This episode of American Stories by acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns presents the history of one of our greatest icons. For over a century, she has stood on Liberty Island, a gift from France created by sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi. Torch eternally aloft, Lady Liberty has been the symbol of hope for generations of immigrants. Interviews with ordinary Americans reveal the statue's great significance. Nominated for an Oscar and an Emmy, this documentary...

Outside the boundaries of America's collective folk imagination and underlying the sweeping narrative of U.S. history lies the lived experience of the nation's westward pioneers. Without exaggeration or embellishment, this captivating documentary focuses on the lives of the common people who headed West between the early 1860s and the turn of the 20th century. Accounts of personal challenges and hardships, interwoven with larger stories of progress...

This poignant collage features members of the Oglala Lakota Sioux living on and off the Pine Ridge reservation who present their unself-pitying yet pointed observations on Lakota history and modern-day Lakota life. Their creation myth and their attitudes toward Mother Earth and the concept of time contribute insights into their worldview, while footage of a major powwow and a tepee-raising offer glimpses of the people's cultural heritage. Wounded...

This program explains how the transcontinental railroad was built, and then how it opened up the West to European settlers and brought on the extermination of the buffalo and the defeat of Southern Plains Indian tribes. Viewers will witness the transformation through first-person accounts from Native Americans, European immigrants, Chinese laborers, buffalo hunters, homesteaders from the eastern U.S., and cowboys on the dusty trails leading from Texas....