A World Still to Conquer • 2024 • episode "S1E6" • Alexander: The Making of a God

58:58

Simon Schama begins Civilisations with this premise: that it is in art - the play of the creative imagination - that humanity expresses its most essential self: the power to break the tyranny of the humdrum, the grind of everyday.

9/10 • Civilisations • 2018 • History

58:58

Think Renaissance and you think of Italy. But in the 15th and 16th centuries, the great Islamic empires experienced their own extraordinary cultural flowering.

5/10 • Civilisations • 2018 • History

110:36

This episode of NEW YORK: A DOCUMENTARY FILM turns to the period when greed and wealth fueled an expanding metropolis, even as politics and poverty defined it. Now the spotlight shines on the growth, glamour and grief of New York during America's giddy postwar "Gilded Age." Exploring the incomparable wealth of the robber barons and the unabashed corruption of political leaders, such as Tammany Hall boss William M. Tweed, the episode examines the era when the expansion of wealth and poverty -- and the schism between them -- built to a crescendo. The program ends as the city itself dramatically expands its boundaries, annexing Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island into a single massive metropolis -- Greater New York.

S1E3 • New York: A Documentary Film • 1999 • History

38:39

After defeating Darius III at Battle of Issus against odds, Alexander falls back and sets sights on unexpected target: Egypt.

S1E3 • Alexander: The Making of a God • 2024 • History

124:21

Victory in Europe seems imminent, but in Holland, the Vosges Mountains, and the Hurtgen Forest, GIs learn painful lessons as old as war itself--that generals make plans, plans go wrong and soldiers die. Meanwhile, on the island of Peleliu, the Marines fight one of the most brutal, and unnecessary, battles of the Pacific.

S1E5 • The War • 2007 • History

44:11

September 1950. On the banks at Incheon, 30 miles from Seoul, General MacArthur is victorious. The landing he planned, to rescue his men stuck in Pusan, was a success. But the war isn't over. In the North, the Americans will have to face an unexpected enemy. On the other side of the frozen Yalu river, Mao, covert as always, has stationed 300,000 of his men. On Thanksgiving Day, the Chinese and North Koreans attack the US army, whose only choice is to fall back. Faced with his army's defeat and Chinese intervention, Truman considers the atomic bomb... Further south, in Indochina, the French are also suffering setbacks. An ambush set by the Vietminh on the road Route Coloniale 4 annihilates them. To relieve the situation, the French government sent as a last resort one of its most famous generals: Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. French win a victory in Vinh Yen , but suffer heavy losses too. The parallel between Korea and Indochina is striking: the same hidden operators, frightened civilians, bomb blasted regions, columns of emaciated prisoners... For De Lattre, it is indeed one and the same war: the war for freedom, against communism. And the real enemy is Stalin, who sends North Koreans weapons and MIG-15 planes, and struts in front of his people with a super bomber capable of carrying his brand new atomic bomb. Will Stalin conquer the world?

S1E3 • Apocalypse: War of Worlds 1945-1991 • 2019 • History