History carried by voices and images
Burns’s documentaries bring photographs, letters, testimony, music, and narration into sustained accounts. Individuals give large historical events a human scale.
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Person
StoryStory
PEOPLE WORTH GETTING TO KNOW
Ken Burns
Documentary filmmaker
A filmmaker whose work invites sustained attention to American history through voices, photographs, music, and individual lives.
A CLOSER LOOK
The story behind it.
A filmmaker whose work invites sustained attention to American history through voices, photographs, music, and individual lives.
The Civil War connects to these stories
The series includes Shelby Foote’s Lincoln anecdotes and performances of the Battle Hymn. Those elements connect the filmmaker to specific selections here.
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PBS · Ken Burns film library (opens in a new tab)Source for Ken Burns: PBS · Ken Burns film library.
Sources & credits
Introductions are grounded in the sources below. Collection notes and reading prompts provide an editorial starting point; personal opinions are identified in the collection’s content.
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Another way into the collection.
PersonTheodore Roosevelt
The Roosevelts provides a documented route from Burns’s films into Theodore Roosevelt’s life.
START WITHThe Man in the Arena
HistoryLeadership
Story“Too many pigs for the tits”
A selected story in Ken Burns’s part of the collection.
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HistoryFreedom
Story“Too many pigs for the tits”
Shelby Foote tells the anecdote in The Civil War.
START WITHExplore the original
HistoryFreedom