For more than 50 years Radio 4 listeners based their impressions of the USA on Alistair Cooke's weekly Letter From America. In 1973 Cooke wrote the critically acclaimed TV series America, widely regarded as one of the best documentary series ever made. In the wake of Cooke's death earlier this year, BBC Four viewers have the chance to see the series again.
Episodes:
1. The First Impact
The first programme is a personal memoire of Alistair Cooke's infatuation with America and its effect on his life.
2. The New Found Land
Tracing the settlements and influence of the Spanish in the West and the French in the East.
3. Home From Home
Following the English dissenters and adventurers who settled in America in the 16th and 17th centuries.
4. Making a Revolution
America's struggle to gain independence from Britain.
5. Inventing a Nation
How the 13 American colonies were unified after winning independence from the British and the formation of the government.
6. Gone West
Pioneers and the dispossession of Native Americans.
7. A Firebell in the Night
A look at slavery in the Southern States and the causes and effects of the Civil War.
8. Domesticating Wilderness
The great push west by the settlers including the Mormons, the founding of Salt Lake City and the crossing of the continent by railroad.
9. Money on the Land
The rise of business and technology: Chicago, railroads, Edison, oil, Rockefeller and the moneyed classes.
10. The Huddled Masses
What was the impact of the flood of immigrants coming from Europe at the turn of the 19th century?
11. The Promise Fulfilled and the Promise Broken
Prosperity and politics in the 1920s.
12. Arsenal
The USA as a world military power and the growth of the United Nations.
13. The More Abundant Life
Alistair Cooke concludes the series by looking at contemporary America in the early 1970s and how it had diverged from the original aims of the settlers.
