The Best Episodes of American Experience
Every episode of American Experience ranked from best to worst. Let's dive into the Best Episodes of American Experience!
TV's most-watched history series brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today.
Top Episode Ratings Summary
The best episode of "American Experience" is "The Feud", rated 8.6/10 from 82 user votes. It was directed by N/A and written by N/A. "The Feud" aired on 9/10/2019 and is rated 0.1 point(s) higher than the second highest rated, "FDR (1): The Center of the World (1882-1921)".
8.6/10 82 votes#1 - The Feud
Season 31 Episode 7 - Aired 9/10/2019
Anderson Hatfield and Randolph McCoy, the patriarchs of the legendary feud, were entrepreneurs seeking to climb up from hardship after fierce economic competition and rapid technological change had turned their lives upside down. When members of both families took their grievances to court, their dispute escalated into a war between two families and a struggle between two states. The Feud reveals more than an isolated story of mountain lust and violence between “hillbillies” — the Hatfield - McCoy feud was a microcosm of the tensions inherent in the nation’s rapid industrialization after the Civil War.
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8.5/10 153 votes#2 - FDR (1): The Center of the World (1882-1921)
Season 7 Episode 1 - Aired 10/12/1994
No description available
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8.5/10 120 votes#3 - T.R.: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt (1): The Long Campaign
Season 9 Episode 1 - Aired 10/6/1996
TR is born into a wealthy New York family that has a strong sense of social justice. He fights his severe asthma through a strenuous exercise program. He becomes New York State assemblyman. Then tragedy strikes with the untimely deaths of his beloved first wife and his mother. To escape his grief, he flees to the Dakota Badlands for the rigors of ranch life. When he returns, his political career flourishes; he eventually becomes William McKinley's Vice President.
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8.4/10 159 votes#4 - Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided, Part I
Season 13 Episode 7 - Aired 2/19/2001
Part 1 and 2 of a six-part chronicle of the Abraham Lincoln-Mary Todd relationship begins with their childhoods and courtship. He, of course, was born into poverty; she, however, grew up in luxury, the daughter of a Kentucky banker and slave owner. (Several of her brothers would die fighting for the South in the Civil War.) While he was something of a rube when they met, she was the opposite, polished and refined. Yet they shared something in common: a love of politics. The marriage of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln proves to be a tempestuous affair accented by her temper, his depression and their political ambitions. Included: his elections to the U.S. House of Representatives and, later, the presidency.
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8.4/10 89 votes#5 - Woodstock
Season 31 Episode 6 - Aired 8/6/2019
In August, 1969, half a million people from all walks of life and every corner of the country converged on a small dairy farm in upstate New York. They came to hear the concert of their lives, but most experienced something far more profound: a moment that would change them and the country forever, and define a cultural revolution.
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8.3/10 66 votes#6 - T.R.: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt (2): The Bully Pulpit
Season 9 Episode 2 - Aired 10/6/1996
After McKinley's assassination, Roosevelt becomes an "accidental" president. Seeing himself as a crusader, TR uses the presidency to advance his agenda of social reform. He expands the power of the presidential office and comes to dominate American politics. Yet, the night he is elected to a second term, TR announces he will not run again, ultimately weakening his second term.
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8.3/10 79 votes#7 - New York (1): The Country and the City
Season 12 Episode 1 - Aired 11/14/1999
The Country and the City, 1609-1825: New York, notes narrator David Ogden Stiers, "was a business proposition from the very start," when Henry Hudson, exploring for the Dutch East India Company, sailed into its harbor. Part 1 also focuses on New Yorker Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary; and Gov. DeWitt Clinton, who built the Erie Canal. "All America," says Stiers, "now met in New York."
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8.3/10 35 votes#8 - Stephen Foster
Season 13 Episode 12 - Aired 4/23/2001
A profile of quintessentially American composer Stephen Foster features interviews with historian Fath Ruffins, biographer Ken Emerson, musicologists Josephine Wright and Dale Cockrell, and modern-day musicians influenced by Foster's work.
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8.3/10 71 votes#9 - New York (8): The Center of the World
Season 16 Episode 1 - Aired 9/8/2003
Filmmaker Ric Burns adds a poignant postscript to his series "New York: A Documentary Film" with this chronicle of the World Trade Center's rise and fall. Burns recounts Sept. 11 wrenchingly, but he devotes more than half the film to the Center's rise. This isn't a pretty story: It's one of economic, political, architectural and engineering labyrinths. The result was a critical and commercial flop, though historian Kenneth Jackson says: "It's more important to history now that it's gone."
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8.3/10 98 votes#10 - Citizen King
Season 16 Episode 4 - Aired 1/19/2004
"Citizen King," a reverential chronicle of the final five years of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, employs eyewitnesses to the history King made to recall it. Among them: Coretta Scott King, former representative William Gray, author David Halberstam, civil-rights veterans Joseph Lowery, Roger Wilkins and Taylor Branch, long-time political figure Andrew Young, former senator Harris Wofford, former attorney general Ramsey Clark and theologian James Cone.
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8.3/10 367 votes#11 - Freedom Summer
Season 26 Episode 6 - Aired 6/24/2014
Recalling the summer of 1964 in Mississippi, when student volunteers from around the country joined local activists in an effort to register to vote as many African-Americans as possible. (Due to intimidation and arcane tests, less than seven percent of the state's African-Americans were registered.) Activists also set up schools to teach children about African-American history; and created a rival Democratic Party to challenge the all-white delegation to the 1964 Democratic National Convention.
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8.2/10 475 votes#12 - The Donner Party
Season 5 Episode 3 - Aired 10/28/1992
Of all the 19th century pioneer stories, none exerts so powerful a hold on the American imagination as this, during the worst winter ever recorded in the High Sierras. In June, 1846, 87 men, women and children began their legendary 2,000 mile journey from Illinois to California. They packed huge wagons, took food, hired servants. When family leaders made the fateful decision to take an untried short cut to beat the coming winter, only half would come out alive.
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- 8.2/10 82 votes
#13 - FDR (2): Fear Itself (1922-1933)
Season 7 Episode 2 - Aired 10/12/1992
No description available
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8.2/10 46 votes#14 - America 1900
Season 11 Episode 1 - Aired 11/18/1998
Over one hundred years ago, Americans looked forward to the uncertainty of a new century with a mixture of confidence, optimism and anxiety. Following a range of characters from famous public figures to ordinary citizens, this chronicle of a year in the life of America examines the forces of change that would come to shape the twentieth century.
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8.2/10 61 votes#15 - New York (2): Order and Disorder
Season 12 Episode 2 - Aired 11/15/1999
"Order and Disorder: 1825-1865" recalls a period of tremendous growth and ferment. Most of the new arrivals were Irish immigrants (100,000 by 1842—and that was before the potato famine), and the subsequent overcrowding led to the construction of Central Park (1857-58). But that didn't quell the ferment, which exploded in 1863 with the racially charged draft riots. "It was the largest incident of civil disorder in U.S. history," notes historian Mike Wallace.
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8.2/10 61 votes#16 - New York (3): Sunshine and Shadow
Season 12 Episode 3 - Aired 11/16/1999
"Sunshine and Shadow: 1865-1898" During the Gilded Age, New York "was home to the greatest concentration of wealth in human history," says narrator David Ogden Stiers. And, he adds, "the greatest concentration of poverty." This episode surveys that dichotomy, from Fifth Avenue mansions to slums documented by Jacob Riis in "How the Other Half Lives." Also recalled: the fall of William H. "Boss" Tweed ("he took a fall for the system," claims Pete Hamill).
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8.2/10 52 votes#17 - New York (6): The City of Tomorrow
Season 14 Episode 1 - Aired 9/10/2001
"City of Tomorrow (1929-45)" focuses on Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who used his close ties to FDR to make the city "a gigantic laboratory of civic reconstruction"; and master builder Robert Moses, who "adapted a 19th century city to 20th century circumstances," says historian Kenneth Jackson. The biggest one: the car. Says narrator David Ogden Stiers: "It challenged all previous assumptions about urban life."
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8.2/10 84 votes#18 - War Letters
Season 14 Episode 3 - Aired 11/1/2001
War letters from the American Revolution to the Gulf War are read by 15 actors (including Joan Allen, Edward Norton, Kevin Spacey and Courtney B. Vance). Accompanied by clips, home movies and re-creations, the letters reflect the horror, boredom, anger and, mostly, fear that war engenders. Many readings are followed by notations that the writers had died, but the hour isn't unrelentingly grim. “Pucker up,” one WWII GI writes to his sweetheart on VJ Day. “Here I come.”
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8.2/10 107 votes#19 - Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple
Season 19 Episode 11 - Aired 4/9/2007
Examines the story behind the November 1978 mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, where more than 900 people were led to their deaths by cult leader Jim Jones. Included: comments from Jones' son, Jim Jr.; survivor Stanley Clayton; and Hue Fortson, whose wife and child died in the incident.
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8.2/10 226 votes#20 - My Lai
Season 22 Episode 6 - Aired 4/26/2010
What drove a company of American soldiers — ordinary young men from around the country — to commit the worst atrocity in American military history? American Experience focuses on the 1968 My Lai massacre, its subsequent cover-up, and the heroic efforts of the soldiers who broke ranks to try to halt the atrocities and then bring them to light.
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8.2/10 167 votes#21 - 1964
Season 26 Episode 2 - Aired 1/14/2014
Recalling 1964, a pivotal year in U.S. history. While the Beatles captured the imaginations of the nation's youth, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, unveiled his vision of a "Great Society" and squared off against Barry Goldwater in the presidential election. Also covered: the murders of three Freedom Summer volunteers; and the influence of Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique." Based in part on Jon Margolis' "The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964."
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8.2/10 139 votes#22 - The Amish: Shunned
Season 26 Episode 3 - Aired 2/4/2014
The Amish practice of shunning those who leave their faith is explored through the experiences of individuals who have left their communities. Also: faithful Amish men and women share the heartbreak they feel when a loved one leaves.
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8.2/10 100 votes#23 - Blackout
Season 27 Episode 7 - Aired 7/14/2015
First responders, journalists, shop owners, those inside the pressure-packed control center of Con Edison on West End Avenue, and other New Yorkers tell about what happened when the lights went out on July 13, 1977
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8.2/10 146 votes#24 - The Great War: Part 3
Season 29 Episode 8 - Aired 4/12/2017
Part 3 of 3. In the fall of 1918: a major American offensive that could bring a swift end to the war, a lost U.S. battalion surrounded by German forces, a deadly flu epidemic on the homefront.
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8.2/10 35 votes#25 - Sealab
Season 31 Episode 2 - Aired 2/12/2019
In 1969 off the California coast, a US Navy crane carefully lowered a massive tubular structure into the waters. It was an audacious feat of engineering — a pressurized underwater habitat, designed for an elite group of divers to spend days or even months at a stretch living and working on the ocean floor.Sealab tells the little-known story of the daring program that tested the limits of human endurance and revolutionized undersea exploration.
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