The last episode in the series explores the fate of art in the machine and profit-driven world and asks: should art create a realm separate from the modern world, or should it plunge headlong into the chaos while transforming the way we see and live in it? Using the works of artists of the 20th and 21st Century, including Ai Weiwei, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol and Anselm Kiefer, we seek answers to these profound questions. The conclusion is imbued with...

The world's major religions and philosophies have their origins in ancient civilizations - and while much has changed since then, countless millions of people through history have maintained a faith and belief in religious principles and teachings that have remained unchanged for millennia. This charming program on the origins, sacred texts and beliefs of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam is an ideal introduction to...

Cities investigates the symbiotic link between urban living and civilization—there have been no cities without civilization, no civilizations without cities. The world’s first settlements were in Mesopotamia, where the emergence of farming created the calories necessary for people to feed themselves on a permanent basis. This led to an exponential increase in population and a blossoming of innovation —civilization itself.

Beginning with a searing indictment of slavery, this program dramatically evokes the causes of the war. Here are the burning questions of union and states' rights, John Brown at Harper's Ferry, the election of Abraham Lincoln, the firing on Fort Sumter, and the jubilant rush to arms on both sides. Along the way the war's major figures are introduced: Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and a host of lesser-known but...

Their names were linked to the two most powerful men during the Civil War. Their lives were both controversial and often times misunderstood, yet never before in American history were there two first ladies. This is the story of Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of the President of the United States, and Varina Davis, wife of the President of the Confederate States of America. Although they were two women from rival governments, they led parallel lives, struggling...

Ulysses S. Grant took command of the entire Union army in March of 1864. He told his commander George Meade, "Lee's army will be your objective. Wherever Lee goes, there will you go also?" Soon enough General Lee found out what he was up against, a Union general who did not retreat. Grant kept pushing toward Richmond and in June the two armies met near the Confederate capital. This program includes reenactments of what happened at one of the bloodiest...

This program sets the stage for an in-depth study of the Spanish Civil War by making sense of the political situation during the run-up to the war; by profiling disparate groups-centrists, anarchists, socialists, communists, separatists-and their leaders and backers; and by tracking the volatile events that snaked, like a powder train, toward the conflagration that in 1936 erupted in Madrid and touched off the military uprising in Spanish Morocco....

The Battle of Franklin was fought on November 30, 1864, at Franklin, Tennessee, as part of the Franklin-Nashville Campaign of the American Civil War. It was one of the worst disasters of the war for the Confederate States Army. Confederate Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee conducted numerous frontal assaults against fortified positions occupied by the Union forces under Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield and was unable to break through or to prevent...

Narrated by Emmy-nominated actress Elizabeth McGovern (Downton Abbey), "Civil War: the Untold Story" provides new insights into the causes of the Civil War, life on the home front, the politics of war, the issue of slavery, and the relatively unheralded role African Americans played in the conflict. Filmed at the actual battle sites, the five-part series uses re-enactors to recreate the epic battles of Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge...

Experience the aftermath of the Civil War—a bewildering, exhilarating, and terrifying time. African-Americans who had played a crucial role in the war now grappled with the terms and implications of Reconstruction and their hard-won freedom.