The BEST episodes written by Randall Maclowry
#1 - The Rise and Fall of Penn Station
American Experience - Season 26 - Episode 8
In 1910, the Pennsylvania Railroad successfully accomplished the enormous engineering feat of building tunnels under New York City's Hudson and East Rivers, connecting the railroad to New York and New England, knitting together the entire eastern half of the United States. The tunnels terminated in what was one of the greatest architectural achievements of its time, Pennsylvania Station. Penn Station covered nearly eight acres, extended two city blocks, and housed one of the largest public spaces in the world. But just 53 years after the station’s opening, the monumental building that was supposed to last forever, to herald and represent the American Empire, was slated to be destroyed.
Watch Now:Amazon#2 - Silicon Valley
American Experience - Season 25 - Episode 6
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.
Watch Now:Amazon#3 - Building the Alaska Highway
American Experience - Season 17 - Episode 4
AMERICAN EXPERIENCE presents Building the Alaska Highway, the story of nearly 11,000 Army engineers who battled freezing temperatures, ice and snow, mountains, mud, muskeg, and mosquitoes to blaze a 1,500-mile road through one of the harshest landscapes in North America, and take a huge step forward in defending the nation from threats in the Pacific. The program interweaves interviews with historians and engineers who built the highway, and presents archival footage and beautiful cinematography of the sub-Arctic route the road took. The film also features never-before-seen home movies of the Alaska Highway.
#4 - Stephen Foster
American Experience - Season 13 - Episode 15
Chronicle of the short life of one of America's first nationally-recognized songwriters.
#5 - A Brilliant Madness
American Experience - Season 14 - Episode 12
Story of the life of MIT mathematician John Nash - from exceptional theory to struggles with mental illness.
#6 - The Feud
American Experience - Season 31 - Episode 10
The feud between the Hatfields and McCoys is perhaps the most famous family conflict in American history. As legend has it, two neighboring families in the backwoods of Appalachia waged a crude and bloody war against each other over a stolen hog, an illicit romance, and longstanding grudges. Yet the events that took place near the end of the 19th century between the Hatfields and McCoys are part of a much richer and more complex narrative of the American experience. 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.