David Grubin

In the 1700s, a small number of Jews came to America, struggling to hold fast to their faith and heritage while becoming part of the emerging nation. Though they fought in the American Revolution, they were at best tolerated, at worst shunned - becoming ready scapegoats in times of crisis. Even after the U.S. Constitution guaranteed freedom of religion, states had the power to prevent Jews from voting, and their status remained uneasy. During the...

With Hitler defeated and six million European Jews murdered, American Jews were fighting despair. However, by 1946, with the return of Jewish American servicemen and the crowning of the first Jewish Miss America - Bess Myerson - a new spirit of optimism emerged. In 1948, Jewish Americans actively supported the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine - Israel - but few chose to live there. By the 1950s, discrimination against Jews in daily life began...

From acclaimed filmmaker David Grubin, Bill Moyers tours the Renaissance legacy of Florence seeking sources of our common artistic, architectural and cultural heritage. Guided by historians, Florentine citizens and interviews with novelist Umberto Eco and filmmaker Franco Zeffirelli we explore the roots of key contemporary ideas, like the preeminence of the individual.

This documentary tells the story of the Buddha's life, a journey especially relevant to our own bewildering times of violent change and spiritual confusion. It features the work of some of the world's greatest artists and sculptors, who across two millennia, have depicted the Buddha's life in art rich in beauty and complexity. Hear insights into the ancient narrative by contemporary Buddhists, including Pulitzer Prize winning poet W.S. Merwin and...

Who owns the rights to the violence of the past - the victim or the perpetrator? Tamara Lanier battles Harvard for daguerreotypes of her enslaved ancestor - images taken by force to "prove" the racist theory of a Harvard professor.

A documentary on the life and times of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Part one covers Roosevelt's early years and early political successes, his bout with polio at age 39, and ends with his election as president. Part two explores FDR's response to the Great Depression, and his leadership of the American people during World War II until his death in 1945.

The story of a callous monarch, swept to her death in the torrent of the French Revolution. It is also the tale of a fragile young woman struggling to find herself during one of the most turbulent moments in human history.

The miniseries weaves together the troubled lives of a dirt-farmer's son and a wealthy Southern slave-owner's daughter. Together, Abraham and Mary Lincoln ascended to the pinnacle of power at the most difficult time in the nation's history, the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln's legacy as the Great Emancipator reshaped the nation while his tragic death left Mary reclusive and forgotten.

Meet Nikola Tesla, the genius engineer and tireless inventor whose technology revolutionized the electrical age of the 20th century. Although eclipsed in fame by Edison and Marconi, it was Tesla₂s vision that paved the way for today₂s wireless world.