Lawrence Hott

TV's most-watched history series brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today.

A look at deaf culture from the 19th century to the present.

NIAGARA FALLS is more than the celebration of a natural wonder: it's a study of human achievement and human folly on an epic scale. It is a tale of exploitation and preservation and the changing nature of love in America - of the way Man has related to Nature over centuries. With spectacular high definition videography, the camera takes us to the edge of the falls via helicopter and boat; we see newsreel footage, actual weddings and much more

This beautifully photographed documentary profiles the surprising life of John James Audubon, one of the foremost naturalists, artists and explorers of the 19th century. Audubon's stunningly vivid wildlife portraits are examined in detail. A self-taught artist, Audubon was also a showman who reveled in dramatizing his Wild West adventures when he toured European drawing rooms. Audubon's fierce promotion of conservation is also discussed.

The War 1812 is a two-hour film history of a deeply significant event in North American and world history. The war shaped American, Canadian and British destiny in the most literal way possible: had one or two battles or decisions gone a different way, a map of the United States today would look entirely (and shockingly) different. The fires of this war forged the nation of Canada; at the same time, the result tolled the end of Native American dreams of a separate nation. By war's end, the process of Native nation removal had already begun in the southeast, paving the way for a Cotton Kingdom powered by slavery, and a United States that had been on the verge of collapse was ready to announce its arrival as a global power. The U.S. did not win the War of 1812, but the noble experiment of democracy had managed to survive intense pressure from without, and within.

Tells about the Wilderness Act of 1964 and the three men responsible for its passage: forester/philosopher Aldo Leopold, author of the bestselling Sand County almanac and the first to bring the word 'ecology' into standard usage; Bob Marshall, millionaire socialist and founder of the Wilderness Society; and Howard Zahniser, a bureaucrat with a love of the wild places he seldom saw. Singly and together, these three fought from the 1920s through the 1950s to preserve the natural world. Provides an overview of the roots of the environmental movement, offering a deeper understanding of one of the most important issues facing contemporary civilization.

The astonishing, heartbreaking, inspiring, and largely-untold story of Native Americans in the United States military. Why do they do it? Why would Indian men and women put their lives on the line for the very government that took their homelands?

America's desire for freedom and the open road resulted in the construction of thousands of highways during the Eisenhower administration. Through interviews, archival footage and photography, America's interstate highway system is revealed to have shaped every aspect of American life and affected the nation's history for better and for worse

Rising Voices is the story about the imminent peril to the Lakota language. It braids together the struggles of Lakota to learn their tribal language today, the historical attempt by the United State to annihilate the language, the rise of immersion language schools, and the participation of outsiders in the rescue of the Lakota language. History is interwoven with present-day short films about the culture, created by Lakota filmmakers and artists.

An examination of the heated debate and conflict between W.E.B DuBois and William Monroe Trotter with Booker T. Washington on how to best uplift the race and secure equality for their community, which led to the Niagara Movement, a short-lived movement that laid the cornerstone of the civil rights movement.

The Garden of Eden is a 1984 American short documentary film directed by Roger M. Sherman. The film posits that in the next 30 years, 20% of all forms of life will cease to exist. It argues that it can be for good business to save the environment: discoveries in the plant, animal, and microbiology worlds show that what you might think of as unimportant could be the cure to a major disease, save an entire species of plant, or ward off pests. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

In the 1970s, one out of every seven Cambodians died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, a communist guerrilla army. The Khmer Rouge tried to annihilate everything Cambodians believed in: the family, dance, music, and their Buddhist religion. Facing death and devastation, 150,000 Cambodians fled to America. This documentary examines the refugees' efforts to adjust to Western life and the significant role played by the Buddhist culture in this difficult process.