America's Best Idea

I am an avowed Ken Burns fan (if you haven't seen "Jazz" or "Baseball," I'd recommend clearing out your weekend and swinging by Blockbuster on the way home today), but I think his most recent documentary series--"National Parks: America's Best Idea" now on PBS--is his best. Coupling history, politics, and a (slightly romanticized but no less) convincing notion of a collective national ethos with arrestingly beautiful cinematography of this country's most celebrated wild places, Burns argues that, like jazz and baseball, both the idea of defending our wild places for posterity and the character of the wild places themselves are fundamental parts of our national identity.




You can view full episodes online here and you can buy the whole series on DVD here