American Experience

American Experience: Jesse Owens 8 p.m., Channel 2 The story of Jesse Owens is too often condensed in the American imagination as a simple tracking shot across the finish line at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin — with Hitler ostensibly pounding a desk somewhere. This "American Experience" documentary does much to supply some crucial context about the man and his life — before and after his world-shaking championship run. Track and field "was basically the American ideal" among sports at the time, observes Times columnist William C. Rhoden, and while Owens was regarded as a hero on the track, he still had to live as a...

American Experience: Jesse Owens 8 p.m., Channel 2 The story of Jesse Owens is too often condensed in the American imagination as a simple tracking shot across the finish line at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin — with Hitler ostensibly pounding a desk somewhere. This "American Experience" documentary does much to supply some crucial context about the man and his life — before and after his world-shaking championship run. Track and field "was basically the American ideal" among sports at the time, observes Times columnist William C. Rhoden, and while Owens was regarded as a hero on the track, he still had to live as a...

No one knows quite what to do with Robert E. Lee. James McPherson, the distinguished Civil War historian, writes, “Here was the irony of Robert E. Lee: His success produced the destruction of everything he fought for.’’ In “Robert E. Lee,’’ the “American Experience’’ documentary that airs tonight on Channel 2, we get as good a look at him as we’re likely to get. While fresh insights into his inner self are few, we gain...

Right now, anyone who watches a lot of television, or listens to pop music, is familiar with a certain vision of America. If not exactly colorblind, this America is one in which different races easily interact, in which a white person might have an Asian boss, Hispanic stepson, or African-American frenemy. On TV, Khloé Kardashian, the part-Armenian mega-celebrity, has a new reality series about her marriage to the Los Angeles Laker Lamar Odom, who is black. In the music world, no one has time to notice that the Black Eyed Peas are ambiguously, strategically cross-racial because it's much more important to debate whether...

The mere thought of enduring another documentary on the assassination of John F. Kennedy should drive anyone to the Cartoon Network.. Anything but more stale air about the horrid particulars of that day in Dallas in 1963. This is less because those particulars are shocking than because they're tired. Most of us old enough to remember them long ago stopped asking others where they were on Nov. 22, 1963, except perhaps on first dates. It was once the question of the '60s, but we're in another millennium.

Right now, anyone who watches a lot of television, or listens to pop music, is familiar with a certain vision of America. If not exactly colorblind, this America is one in which different races easily interact, in which a white person might have an Asian boss, Hispanic stepson, or African-American frenemy. On TV, Khloé Kardashian, the part-Armenian mega-celebrity, has a new reality series about her marriage to the Los Angeles Laker Lamar Odom, who is black. In the music world, no one has time to notice that the Black Eyed Peas are ambiguously, strategically cross-racial because it's much more important...

“I talk with the authority of failure.’’ When thinking about the popular culture of the 1930s, that icon of Jazz Age decadence, F. Scott Fitzgerald, rarely comes to mind. And yet it is Fitzgerald’s words that haunt Morris Dickstein’s judiciously researched, persuasively argued, elegant analysis of Depression culture, “Dancing in the Dark.’’ Failure was in the air - the country itself had failed, in a way - and the weightless fantasies of a prior decade had lost their savor.

Before returning to Munich this fall, they wanted to do "something American. " Europeans associate the "wild, wild West" with America, Claudia said, "but I'm not sure everybody knows that real cowboys still exist. " BRIGHT GREEN: Searching online, they found TX Ranch , a fourth-generation cattle ranch near Lovell, in north central Wyoming, near the Montana border.

Faced with subjects whose religion and culture prohibit them from giving interviews on camera or even posing for pictures, many filmmakers would have given up. The folks at PBS' "American Experience" stuck with it, however, and emerged with a revealing look at the Amish, a religious community of about 250,000 centered primarily in rural Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. The film premieres Tuesday on PBS stations (8 p.m. EST). The Amish, distinguished by their horse-and-buggy mode of transportation, proved not only elusive to study but more...

PBS' fall schedule has a definite British accent, courtesy of the returning drama "Upstairs Downstairs" and newcomer "Call the Midwife. " The prominence of dramas imported from the U.K. is no surprise given PBS' success with "Downton Abbey," "Sherlock" and season one of "Upstairs Downstairs. " "Call the Midwife," a six-part series set in 1950s London that was a hit in Britain, will kick off PBS' new season at 8 p.m. EDT Sunday, Sept. 30, it was announced Tuesday. Starting Oct. 7, "Midwife" will be followed by sophomore "Upstairs Downstairs" airing...

No one knows quite what to do with Robert E. Lee. James McPherson, the distinguished Civil War historian, writes, “Here was the irony of Robert E. Lee: His success produced the destruction of everything he fought for.’’ In “Robert E. Lee,’’ the “American Experience’’ documentary that airs tonight on Channel 2, we get as good a look at him as we’re likely to get. While fresh insights into his inner self are few, we gain...

The mere thought of enduring another documentary on the assassination of John F. Kennedy should drive anyone to the Cartoon Network.. Anything but more stale air about the horrid particulars of that day in Dallas in 1963. This is less because those particulars are shocking than because they're tired. Most of us old enough to remember them long ago stopped asking others where they were on Nov. 22, 1963, except perhaps on first dates. It was once the question of the '60s, but we're in another millennium.

Before returning to Munich this fall, they wanted to do "something American. " Europeans associate the "wild, wild West" with America, Claudia said, "but I'm not sure everybody knows that real cowboys still exist. " BRIGHT GREEN: Searching online, they found TX Ranch , a fourth-generation cattle ranch near Lovell, in north central Wyoming, near the Montana border.

AS THE STEAMSHIP BRITANNIA veered into her berth at Long Wharf on the evening of January 22, 1842, 29-year-old Charles Dickens stood on deck, huddled against the wind in a bearskin coat. The dashing British author of five blockbuster novels, including The Adventures of Oliver Twist and The Old Curiosity Shop and a popular collection of stories called Sketches by Boz, had just endured 18 dreary days at sea and a battering storm for the chance to tour the United States and write a travel book about the New World.

A fast-paced tour of 150 years of the Irish-American experience, James R. Barrett's "The Irish Way: Becoming American in the Multiethnic City" offers a wide-frame portrait of an immigrant group that helped define what it means to be an American. In his ambition to address every major aspect of Irish-American life and culture he often overrides opportunities for telling smaller, more intimate stories. But this isn't meant to be "Angela's Ashes. " "The Irish Way" is a biography of an entire people.