TechKnowledgy Newsletter

May 2008 • Volume 12, Number 9

Department of Educational Services

The Presidents

As a pivotal presidential election approaches, American Experience presents seven 20th-century biographies that offer an intimate and compelling look at the men who have defined and redefined the modern presidency.

Educational materials include an extensive Web site at pbs.org/presidents/2008, online access to the full biographies and related teacher guides.

Airing in May on Western Reserve Public Media

George H.W. Bush

Monday, May 5 and Tuesday, May 6 at 9 p.m.
Repeats Wednesday, May 7 and Thursday, May 8 at 3 a.m.

When George H.W. Bush left the Oval Office in 1992, rejected after one tumultuous presidential term, his 30-year career in public service came to an abrupt and unexpected end.

Despite soaring approval ratings following military victory in the Persian Gulf, his years as president after the war were marked by almost unrelieved decline. A sluggish economy and an earlier decision to raise taxes, despite an explicit campaign oath, led to his defeat. By the end of his term, many observers dismissed him as an artifact of an irrelevant Cold War past.

George H.W. Bush tells the story of a man born to both economic and political privilege and tutored in modesty, a man who enlisted in the Navy on his 18th birthday and became a hero in World War II. It recounts Bush’s post-war time at Yale University, where he excelled in athletics, and his marriage to Barbara Pierce.

The film tells of his adventurous days as a Texas oil wildcatter, the tragic loss of a daughter to leukemia and his entry into Republican politics at a time of roiling change.

FDR

Mondays, May 12 and May 19 at 9 p.m.
Repeats Wednesdays, May 14 and May 21 at 3 a.m.

Radio broadcasts beamed his voice into living rooms around the country; his picture hung on Americans’ walls. His wife was the most admired woman in the country.

One of the nation’s most popular presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt served three terms — longer than anyone before or since — and led the country through two great crises of the 20th century: the Great Depression and World War II. The series includes archival film, home movies and audio clips; newly filmed footage of significant landmarks in Roosevelt’s life; an album of family photographs; and interviews with family members, friends and witnesses to history.

FDR goes beyond the familiar words and images to offer an intimate, incisive and often surprising portrait of a man who changed America’s ideas about the presidency, who still shapes our understanding of the role of government and whose influence defines the terms of much of our political discourse.

Truman

Sunday, May 25 at 9:30 p.m. and Monday, May 26 at 9 p.m.
Repeats Tuesday, May 27 at 3:30 a.m. and Wednesday, May 28 at 3 a.m.

He was a farmer, a haberdasher gone bankrupt, an unknown politician from Missouri who suddenly found himself president. Of all the men who had held office, he was the least prepared.

Yet Harry S. Truman would have to end the war with Germany and Japan, decide whether to use the most terrible weapon ever devised, confront the Soviet Union and wage war in Korea.