Several surprisingly memorable PBS documentaries in the last several weeks.
The most prominent was RECONSTRUCTION: America After the Civil War, by Harvard's Henry Louis Gates. Two parts, totaling four hours. Here, here. Gates has a companion book. See also the short standard history of Reconstruction, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, by Eric Foner, who is interviewed in the documentary. Unlike Foner's book, the documentary tracers the after-effects of Reconstruction and its collapse into the 1920s and 1930s.
By biggest take-home lesson was that this decade 1865-1875 is the centerpiece of many examples that American history has mostly been seriously crazy. The first decade was crazy (to start with, nobody knew how the Constitution worked; see Jonathan Giepnap's new book The Second Creation). The War of 1812 was crazy; so was the subsequent Jackson era. The 1840s, 1850s were crazy (there were about six initiatives for presidential impeachment prior to Andrew Johnson; see Giepnap). There were many crazy years of lead-up to the Civil War. (Even the months before the war were crazy. We forget that a number of Southern states seceded immediately after Lincoln's November election, under President Buchanan, and long before Ft. Sumter; and that in part, the South thought it would be a very economically successful country due to the world demand for cotton - more like the secession of Quebec or Catalonia if they were half of Canada or Spain.)
The Civil War was horrible and then each several-year period from 1865 to 1880 were rich in a some new kind of crazy. By the great depression of the early 1890s we were into the labor/capital period of crazy. No need to mention the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s. (For refreshers on 60s-crazy, see the trifecta of HBO's Path to War with Michael Gambon as LBJ, Fog of War about McNamara, and MLK, King In the Wilderness from HBO last year.)
KOREA: The Never Ending War, here, was one I tivo'd but wasn't sure I would ever watch. It was gripping. Korea was invaded by Japan in 1910, and treated very badly, becoming much worse during the WW2. When WW2 was over and Japan defeated, there was no turnkey government to restore, so the Allies divided Korea at the 38th parallel, US and Russian. By the late 40s, tensions were very high and US under MacCarthur invaded North(ern) Korea almost to the China border. However, they were stopped by a horrific winter and by the early 50s a stalemate returned at the 38th parallel. However, both sides bombed the other into oblivion by the time a truce was declared in 1953. In the meantime, Truman had fired MacArthur - who received a hero's welcome in the US while Truman had a record low 22% approval rating. In the 50s, North Korea rebuilt faster than South Korea, but South Korea caught up and sped ahead. Two hours.
TRUMP's TRADE WAR (here) is a misleadingly-titled episode of Frontline that I almost didn't watch. I would have missed alot. It's really about the last 20 years of political, business, and strategic relationships with China, how much is going on now (add cyberwar and DJT), and what may happen next. This was about the most interesting single hour of television I've seen in a long time.
Two interesting documentaries about important women.
See IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Queen Elizabeth II, a new one hour documentary reviewing her entire life in a concise hour. This is a small PBS series I haven't noticed before (another subject is Jim Henson, another Muhammed Ali.) Here.
American Experience has a one hour documentary on Emma Goldman, 1869-1940, a Russian immigrant in the 1880s with a prolific career as a New York-based socialist and activist until her expulsion from the US - and back to wartime Russian - in 1918. Here.
I haven't checked which ones stream free; while PBS has gotten fussier about streaming free video, most of these are available for rental on Amazon for no more than a couple dollars. Some might be available video-on-demand on your cable tv service.
