[Chuzzlewit]

I completely agree with all criticism of Ken Burns. I was enthralled with his doc on the The Dust Bowl... granted it’s big fat old message at the end was that our dear gubmint saved us from ourselves and cured the problem and saved the farmer.

It was still an amazing show... but you have always get ready for his little agenda message at the end, which takes all he was told you in the doc, and gives you the lesson you are supposed to have learned, much as the show “60 minutes” does.

so it’s largely propaganda... I see it for what it is, and refuse to draw his conclusions.

[Verginius Rufus]

I watched large parts of the Civil War series, very little of the others. At least the Civil War series had the merit of making Joshua Chamberlain better known and making people aware of Sullivan Ballou's magnificent last letter to his wife (although Burns omitted some of the best lines of it). I believe he also quoted from Nannie Haskins' diary (she was a teenager living in Clarksville, Tennessee, during the war).

In any case, the University of Tennessee Press has just published a paperback edition of Nannie Haskins' diary ($30).