The War

Beginning tonight PBS begins a 15 1/2 hour series called The War. It's Ken Burns latest effort, and PBS fans are very familiar with his work, including The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz and others. The PBS website describes the series:

THE WAR, a seven-part series directed and produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, tells the story of the Second World War through the personal accounts of a handful of men and women from four quintessentially American towns. The series explores the most intimate human dimensions of the greatest cataclysm in history — a worldwide catastrophe that touched the lives of every family on every street in every town in America — and demonstrates that in extraordinary times, there are no ordinary lives.

Throughout the series, the indelible experience of combat is brought vividly to life as veterans describe what it was like to fight and kill and see men die at places like Monte Cassino and Anzio and Omaha Beach; the Hürtgen Forest and the Vosges Mountains and the Ardennes; and on the other side of the world at Guadalcanal and Tarawa and Saipan; Peleliu and the Philippine Sea and Okinawa. In all of the battle scenes, dramatic historical footage and photographs are combined with extraordinarily realistic sound effects to give the film a terrifying, visceral immediacy.

This series was the subject of a previous post in which the Hispanic Congressional Caucus sought to force changes in the series because they felt Hispanics weren't property represented. From what I understand, no such changes were made.

I'm a fan of Burns' work. I've seen Baseball and have the companion book, and own the DVD of The Civil War. The TiVo is set and I'm looking forward to seeing what he did with this series.