The History Channel's America: The Story of Us. . .Propaganda?

[oden]

And all the rest of history is so old that we don't blame the fact that every piece of sod on this earth has been the result of one tribe beating out the other for where they live. Wow, how great would it be if the Pics' (sic) still ruled Europe?

[LuckyNatalia]

Native American Direct descendant I have found over the years of my education that the french indian war was a kind of "make believe" a fairy tale like peter pan. My people live in poverty, filth and depression. The efforts I've seen my people attempt to be recognized have failed. The children of our future will be unable to help us because the educational system is failing us and not teaching of our very own "Natives to America"

[Frank Zappatista]

The History Channel series cited by the OP left me wanting, significantly.

My favorite documentary series on the US and related, thus far:

1) PBS' Liberty series: http://www.pbs.org/ktca/liberty/ (query Google Video for chapters)

2) PBS and Ken Burns' series The Civil War: http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/ (query Google Video for chapters)

3) For Native American history, see 500 Nations, hosted by Kevin Costner: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111868/ for more info; for Part 1, complete, http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...46601041698993 (query Google Video for more chapters)

[Willen]

I watched last night for the first time. It certainly had a distinct ponit of view, and I'd say that 'rose-colored' describes what I saw. But we should rememeber that history is indeed a story, a reconstruction of portions of the past. So necessarily it involves choices about what to include & how to interpret the material presented. That's inescapable, although some historians do much better than others at dealing with complexity in a balanced manner. I thought that some of the connections they made, especially invloving technology, were interesting. But all told I wasn't much impressed.

[GneissGuy]

Originally Posted by ANONONE

Then they talk about the Boston Massacre. They portray the people shot as completely innocent martyrs. Huh? The troops were there to put down insurrection that was bloody and violent. The malcontents, including Atticus, were armed with clubs, cobblestones, and farm tools and had drawn first blood by attacking the trroops that were attempting to make them disband and go home--peacefully. The crowd turned on them, and a nervous soldier pulled the trigger.

Better fire up the DVR and watch again. They did a pretty balanced coverage about the crowd being a threat to the soldiers and the lies the revolutionaries told about the incident to stir up the public.

However, the History Channel has become the Hysterically Funny Channel a lot recently. I watch Modern Marvels a lot, and most episodes have some really bonehead factual/scientific errors. They need to hire a good high school physics student to proofread their scripts.