THE STORY OF US

FILMMAKER KEN BURNS, IN HIS LATEST DOCUMENTARY SERIES, TACKLES WHAT HE CALLS 'THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD SINCE THE BIRTH OF CHRIST'—AMERICA'S REVOLUTIONARY WAR

- BY Carlo Versano

IT WOULD BE HARD TO IMAGINE TODAY, but for a week in the fall of 1990, it seemed almost everyone in America was watching the same thing, at the same time. Nearly 40 million people tuned in for at least one episode of Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War as it unfurled over five consecutive nights on public-access television. The miniseries pulled in an average of 14 million viewers a night—more than double the viewership of Jimmy Kimmel's recent episode returning from his suspension. Fourteen million Americans tuning in at the same appointed hour to hear a sweeping, painstaking retelling of a historical event some 130 years prior that is widely considered the country’s original sin. It remains the most popular program ever to air on PBS.

The smashing success of The Civil War launched Burns, now 72, into popular consciousness, making him the rare filmmaker who could seemingly engage all Americans about their shared history, from jazz and baseball to prohibition and Vietnam to the subject of his latest project, The American Revolution.

If the Civil War was the “traumatic event of our childhood,” as Burns once described it to a reporter, the Revolution is our origin story—the “story of us,” he said in a wide-ranging Newsmakers interview with Newsweek Editor-in-Chief Jennifer H. Cunningham from his longtime home and office in rural New Hampshire.

When Americans think of the Revolution, to the extent they think of it at all, certain moments come to mind. The Boston Massacre. Lexington and Concord. Washington crossing the Delaware (“He's not standing up in that boat,” Burns said of the iconic image made famous by the Emanuel Leutze painting. “Nobody stands up in a boat at night with an ice field river in the middle of a storm.”)