#2336 - Ken Burns

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves – and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked an…

“by early 76 nobody's absolutely not nobody but there's not a majority will for independence independency as they called it and then Thomas Payne comes in and writes this pamphlet common sense and all of a sudden people going oh yeah and by June there's a committee of the Second”

“Right, all of it, all of it. Which is also extraordinary. You know, it's the public broadcasting service. It's the declaration of independence applied to communications, just as the national parks, you could say, was the declaration of independence applied to the landscape.”

In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life-journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot who spared nothing in his zeal for…

“the bold face names that we all know, the Washington's and the Thomas Payne's and the Jefferson's and the, and the, John Adams, but also the people you've never heard of, right? .01% of people have a painting made of them or a drawing. Everybody else is visually anonymous, but somewhere they wrote their name down,”

“And you don't get it from churning it out either. So I spent five and a half years working on the Civil War and I really was like, daunted by it.”

“used to keep these two big thick three-wing binders on my desk all filled with rejections for that one film I mean literally hundreds of rejections but I had read David McCullough's The Great Bridge the epic story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and I went out to my partners we just found it our”

“of born in there that entrenched positions that people take now I think there's also a sense you know the Pentagon papers were McNamara going to a gentleman that we interviewed Robert Cardin and saying I need to find out all the decisions and he learned not only was he lying at times you know going”

The complete text of the bestselling narrative history of the Civil War--based on the celebrated PBS television series. This non-illustrated edition interweaves the author's narrative with the voices of the men and women…

“It was about authentic emotional stuff, higher emotional stuff. The way our founders would talk about we'd be able to create a republic where you'd have higher emotions.”