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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!

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TV's most-watched history series brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today.

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Episode Rankings

  1. #1 Fan Favorite
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    American Experience Season 30 Episode 1 - Into the Amazon
    10.0/10(1 votes)

    #1 - Into the Amazon

    S30:E1

    The remarkable story of President Theodore Roosevelt’s journey with legendary Brazilian explorer Candido Rondon into the heart of the South American rainforest to chart an unexplored tributary of the Amazon.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  2. American Experience Season 30 Episode 2 - The Secret of Tuxedo Park
    10.0/10(1 votes)

    #2 - The Secret of Tuxedo Park

    S30:E2

    In the fall of 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his country’s most valuable military secret — a revolutionary radar component — to a Wall Street tycoon, Alfred Lee Loomis. Using his connections, his money, and his brilliant scientific mind, Loomis and his team of scientists developed radar technology that played a more decisive role than any other weapon in World War II.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  3. American Experience Season 30 Episode 3 - The Gilded Age
    10.0/10(1 votes)

    #3 - The Gilded Age

    S30:E3

    Meet the titans and barons of the glittering late 19th century, whose materialistic extravagance contrasted harshly with the poverty of the struggling workers who challenged them. The vast disparities between them sparked debates still raging today.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  4. American Experience Season 30 Episode 4 - The Bombing of Wall Street
    10.0/10(1 votes)

    #4 - The Bombing of Wall Street

    S30:E4

    Explore the story behind the first terrorist attack in the U.S., a mostly-forgotten 1920 bombing in the nation’s financial center that left 38 dead – a crime that remains unsolved today.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  5. American Experience Season 30 Episode 7 - The Circus (1)
    10.0/10(1 votes)

    #5 - The Circus (1)

    S30:E7

    Explore the early days of this popular, influential and distinctly American form of entertainment during an era when master showmen P.T. Barnum, James Bailey and the Ringling Brothers transformed the nation’s popular culture.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  6. American Experience Season 30 Episode 8 - The Circus (2)
    10.0/10(1 votes)

    #6 - The Circus (2)

    S30:E8

    Revisit the heyday of this distinctly American form of entertainment when former rivals Barnum, Bailey and the Ringling Brothers joined forces to present the “greatest show on earth” in big cities and small towns across the country.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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    The 20 WORST Episodes of American Experience

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  7. American Experience Season 31 Episode 4 - Chasing the Moon - Earthrise
    10.0/10(2 votes)

    #7 - Chasing the Moon - Earthrise

    S31:E4

    What exactly was it going to take for America to beat the Soviets to the moon? Cold War tensions persisted, as rumours circulated that the Soviets were preparing to send an unmanned spacecraft to the moon. Nasa quickly developed the Gemini program, sending astronauts into orbit around the Earth to practice critical manoeuvres for the eventual trip to the moon.

    Director:Robert Stone
    Writer:Unknown

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  8. American Experience Season 31 Episode 5 - Chasing the Moon - Magnificent Desolation
    10.0/10(1 votes)

    #8 - Chasing the Moon - Magnificent Desolation

    S31:E5

    After the immediate celebration of 1968’s successful Apollo 8 mission, underlying questions about the space programme emerged with new intensity as politicized young Americans challenged the nation’s priorities. Nasa pushed brashly forward.

    Director:Robert Stone
    Writer:Unknown

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  9. American Experience Season 31 Episode 3 - Chasing the Moon - A Place Beyond the Sky
    9.7/10(3 votes)

    #9 - Chasing the Moon - A Place Beyond the Sky

    S31:E3

    On 4 October 1957, Soviet scientists launched Sputnik 1 - a beach ball-sized, radio-transmitting aluminium alloy sphere - into orbit. The satellite caused a sensation. Amid Cold War tensions, the Soviet Union’s accomplishment signalled a dramatic technological advantage and American felt it had little choice but to join the Space Race.

    Director:Robert Stone
    Writer:Unknown

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  10. American Experience Season 17 Episode 9 - Victory in the Pacific
    9.0/10(1 votes)

    #10 - Victory in the Pacific

    S17:E9

    No description available

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  11. American Experience Season 28 Episode 1 - Bonnie & Clyde
    8.5/10(2 votes)

    #11 - Bonnie & Clyde

    S28:E1

    Though their exploits were romanticized, the Barrow gang was believed responsible for at least 23 murders, including two policemen, as well as numerous robberies and kidnappings. Discover the true story of the most famous outlaw couple in U.S. history -- Bonnie and Clyde.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  12. American Experience Season 17 Episode 5 - Kinsey
    8.0/10(1 votes)

    #12 - Kinsey

    S17:E5

    Profiling Dr. Alfred Kinsey, the Indiana University zoologist whose "revolutionary picture of American sexuality" rocked the country in the late 1940s and early '50s. Filmmakers Barak Goodman and John Maggio interview Kinsey colleagues and biographers, along with people took part in his studies, to paint a portrait of an "unyielding" proponent of sexual freedom who practiced what he preached. Says sexologist Paul Gebhard, a Kinsey assistant: "He was a rebel."

    Directors:Barak Goodman, John Maggio
    Writer:Barak Goodman

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  13. American Experience Season 24 Episode 2 - Custer's Last Stand
    8.0/10(1 votes)

    #13 - Custer's Last Stand

    S24:E2

    A profile of Gen. George Armstrong Custer (1839-76), nicknamed "the boy general" for his Civil War exploits, who died with many other members of the 7th Cavalry while battling the Cheyenne and Lakota along the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory. The documentary details his time at West Point, where he became infamous for his rebellious nature; his relationship with his wife Libbie; his year-long suspension from the service; and the campaign against the Cheyenne that led to his death.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  14. American Experience Season 24 Episode 4 - Clinton: The Survivor (2)
    8.0/10(1 votes)

    #14 - Clinton: The Survivor (2)

    S24:E4

    The conclusion of the Bill Clinton biography recalls the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which led to Clinton becoming the second U.S. president to be impeached. It also details his face-off over the federal budget with Newt Gingrich, whose refusal to compromise led to a government shutdown, and successful 1996 reelection campaign. Among those commenting: Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr; Paula Jones' attorney James Fisher; and White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  15. American Experience Season 28 Episode 6 - The Boys of '36
    8.0/10(1 votes)

    #15 - The Boys of '36

    S28:E6

    The story of nine working-class young men from the University of Washington who took the rowing world and America by storm when they captured the gold medal at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Their unexpected victory, against not only the Ivy League teams of the East Coast but Adolf Hitler's elite German rowers, gave hope to a nation struggling to emerge from the depths of the Great Depression.

    Director:Margaret Grossi
    Writer:Aaron R. Cohen

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  16. American Experience Season 31 Episode 1 - The Swamp
    8.0/10(2 votes)

    #16 - The Swamp

    S31:E1

    The history of the Everglades is a dramatic yet little known story of humanity’s attempt to conquer nature. The Swamp, told through the lives of a handful of colorful and resolute characters, explores the repeated efforts to reclaim, control and transform what was seen as a vast wasteland into an agricultural and urban paradise, and, ultimately, the drive to preserve America’s greatest wetland.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  17. American Experience Season 31 Episode 7 - The Feud
    8.0/10(4 votes)

    #17 - The Feud

    S31:E7

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  18. American Experience Season 25 Episode 6 - War of the Worlds
    7.6/10(5 votes)

    #18 - War of the Worlds

    S25:E6

    A broadcast that struck fear into an already anxious nation, Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast was the most famous alien invasion that never happened.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  19. American Experience Season 28 Episode 3 - Murder of a President
    7.2/10(5 votes)

    #19 - Murder of a President

    S28:E3

    The story of James Garfield, one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president, and his assassination by a deluded madman named Charles Guiteau. The story follows Garfield's unprecedented rise to power, his shooting only four months into his presidency, and its bizarre and heartbreaking aftermath.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  20. American Experience Season 1 Episode 6 - Do You Mean There Are Still Real Cowboys?
    7.0/10(1 votes)

    #20 - Do You Mean There Are Still Real Cowboys?

    S1:E6

    A year in the life of Wyoming cowboys and the ranching families who have lived in Big Piney for six generations. Although very much the same as it was one hundred years ago -- tough, lonely, but still romantic -- ranching is now a threatened way of life.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  21. American Experience Season 25 Episode 1 - The Abolitionists: 1820s-1838
    7.0/10(3 votes)

    #21 - The Abolitionists: 1820s-1838

    S25:E1

    The story of how abolitionist allies William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown and Angelina Grimke turned a despised fringe movement against chattel slavery into a force that literally changed the nation.

    Director:Rob Rapley
    Writer:Unknown

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  22. American Experience Season 25 Episode 5 - Silicon Valley
    7.0/10(6 votes)

    #22 - Silicon Valley

    S25:E5

    Led by physicist Robert Noyce, Fairchild Semiconductor began as a start-up company whose radical innovations would help make the United States a leader in both space exploration and the personal computer revolution, changing the way the world works, plays, and communicates. Noyce's invention of the microchip ultimately re-shaped the future, launching the world into the Information Age.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  23. American Experience Season 31 Episode 2 - Sealab
    7.0/10(2 votes)

    #23 - Sealab

    S31:E2

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  24. American Experience Season 31 Episode 6 - Woodstock
    6.8/10(4 votes)

    #24 - Woodstock

    S31:E6

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  25. American Experience Season 1 Episode 1 - The Great San Francisco Earthquake
    6.5/10(2 votes)

    #25 - The Great San Francisco Earthquake

    S1:E1

    From Enrico Caruso to the ordinary San Franciscan, this film presents vivid memories of those trapped in the terrifying event of 1906. Four hundred eighty square blocks were reduced to rubble; thousands were killed, tens of thousands left homeless. Then the heroic struggle to rebuild a city from the ashes began.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Tom Weidlinger

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Best Episodes Summary

"Into the Amazon" is the best rated episode of "American Experience". It scored 10/10 based on 1 votes. Directed by Unknown and written by Unknown, it aired on 1/9/2018. This episode scored 0.0 points higher than the second highest rated, "The Secret of Tuxedo Park".