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Season 1/Episode 2: A City Upon a Hill - The Pilgrims and the Puritans

The 1620s were a time of political and religious turmoil in England. The protracted struggle for supremacy between monarch and Parliament reached new heights in 1629, when King Charles I disbanded the rival body and ruled alone for 11 years. Official pressure was also applied on religious dissenters, notably the the Pilgrims and the Puritans. Some were imprisoned for their nonconformist views and others lost lucrative official positions. Time to find a New World in which to build a "City Upon a Hill."

Season 1/Episode 1: Jamestown - British Economic Settlement in the New World

The New World wasn't exactly new. Native Americans, for thousands of years, prospered before European contact. Spain possessed much of South America, while France acquired the central portions of North America. On May 14, 1607, a group of roughly 100 British members of a joint venture called the Virginia Company founded the first permanent English settlement in North America on the banks of the James River. Famine, disease and conflict with local Native American tribes in the first two years brought this Atlantic coastal colony to the brink of failure before the arrival of a new group of settlers and supplies in 1610.

Season 2/Episode 27: The Vietnam War - On the Homefront

By November 1967, the number of American troops in Vietnam was approaching 500,000, and U.S. casualties had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. As the war stretched on, some soldiers came to mistrust the government’s reasons for keeping them there, as well as Washington’s repeated claims that the war was being won. Bombarded by horrific images of the war on their televisions, Americans on the home front turned against the war as well. In October 1967, some 35,000 demonstrators staged a massive Vietnam War protests outside the Pentagon. Opponents of the war argued that civilians, not enemy combatants, were the primary victims and that the United States was supporting a corrupt dictatorship in Saigon. Amid this turbulent time, a counterculture of flower power was also emerging, giving way to sex, drugs, and scores of unforgettable music.

Season 2/Episode 21: The Cold War - Containment

During World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union fought together as allies against the Axis powers. However, the relationship between the two nations was a tense one. Americans had long been wary of Soviet communism and concerned about Russian leader Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical, blood-thirsty rule of his own country. For their part, the Soviets resented the Americans’ decades-long refusal to treat the USSR as a legitimate part of the international community as well as their delayed entry into World War II, which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Russians. After the war ended, these grievances ripened into an overwhelming sense of mutual distrust and enmity. Postwar Soviet expansionism in Eastern Europe fueled many Americans’ fears of a Russian plan to control the world. Meanwhile, the USSR came to resent what they perceived as American officials’ bellicose rhetoric, arms buildup and interventionist approach to international relations. In such a hostile atmosphere, no single party was entirely to blame for the Cold War; in fact, some historians believe it was inevitable.

Season 2/Episode 20: World War II - Victory in Europe and Japan

On June 6, 1944 – observed as “D-Day” - the Allied began a massive invasion of Europe, landing 156,000 British, Canadian and American soldiers on the beaches of Normandy, France. In response, Hitler poured all the remaining strength of his army into the Battle of the Bulge, the last major German offensive of the war. Meanwhile in the Pacific, heavy casualties sustained in the campaigns at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and fears of the even costlier land invasion of Japan led Truman to authorize the use of a new and devastating weapon – the atomic bomb – on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Second World War was over, but at a tremendous cost to not only "The Greatest Generation," but the entire world.