George Bernard Shaw was once quoted as humorously saying, "Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed." Yet his Pygmalion has lived on. His play, indeed, is better known to contemporary readers than the Greek myth (about a sculptor who falls in love with one of his statues) from which it derives its title. Shaw's rag-to-riches comedy made the leap from stage to screen in 1938, but it wasn't a smooth transition.
In 1961, segregation seemed to have an overwhelming grip on American society. Many states violently enforced the policy, while the federal government, under the Kennedy administration, remained indifferent, preoccupied with matters abroad.
In 1957, Little Rock Central High School became a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement when, in defiance of federal orders to integrate the school, the Governor of Arkansas called out the National Guard to prevent nine African-American students from entering the building.
UNFORGIVABLE BLACKNESS: THE RISE AND FALL OF JACK JOHNSON tells the story of the first African-American boxer to win the most coveted title in all of sports and his struggle, in and out of the ring, to live his life as a free man.
Sent by the President Thomas Jefferson to find the fabled Northwest Passage, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the most important expedition in American history—a voyage of danger and discovery from St. Louis to the headwaters of the Missouri River, over the Continental Divide to the Pacific.
Revered as the author of the Declaration of Independence, the most sacred document in American history, yet condemned as a lifelong owner of slaves, THOMAS JEFFERSON remains the enigma that is America.
HORATIO'S DRIVE recounts the simultaneously inspirational and hilarious saga of Horatio Nelson Jackson, an eccentric Vermont doctor, who in 1903—on a visionary whim and a 50-dollar-bet—became the first person to drive an automobile across the continent, heralding the future of the "horseless carriage" as a vehicle destined for more than inner-city travel and as a machine that would transform Am
Samuel Clemens rose from a hardscrabble boyhood in the backwoods of Missouri to become Mark Twain, America's best-known and best-loved author. Considered in his time as the funniest man on earth, Twain was also an unflinching critic of human nature who used his humor to attack hypocrisy, greed and racism.
Frank Lloyd Wright was the greatest of all American architects. He was an authentic American genius, a man who believed he was destined to redesign the world, creating everything anew.
The citizens of Verona have grown tired of the constant quarrel between the houses of Capulet and Montague. As ruler of the region, Prince Escalus has formed a council to help mediate the conflict and bring lasting peace to Verona.
