Customer Reviews

The 20th Century: A Moving Visual History, Boxed Set [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I found this a fascinating overview of a topic that is too big for 12 hours of film -- 10 decades of mostly U.S. and some world history. There is a good balance of topics between wars-and-dates, popular culture and personalities, and the changes in conditions of regular people -- workers, soldiers, immigrants, and women.

An ongoing theme is the evolution of things we now take for granted, such as access to information, equal rights, a decent standard of living, and core American values and civil rights. Most events are dealt with only briefly, an unfortunate necessity given the medium. But the topics, images, and film clips are always interesting.

I read the reviews here before I saw the DVD and was watching for a left-not-just-liberal slant, but I saw very little for most "hot button" topics mentioned. There is little time even spent on Israel and the Palestinians, for example. And the internment of Japanese-Americans in WW II got only a brief mention, much shorter than the time devoted to "Casablanca."

Yes, the film was sympathetic to the rights of minorities, but it didn't focus much time on Civil Rights except during the 60's. Yes, early Socialists were portrayed as idealistic in response to capitalist excesses, but Stalin and Mao were portrayed as evil. Nixon's achievements at home and abroad were praised as brave and underappreciated, while his personality was portrayed as contributing to his downfall. The survey of Clinton's presidency focused mostly on scandals.

Perhaps recent events are still too fresh for either the film's makers or its viewers to see in a fully "historical" context. I found the coverage of the recent decades adequate, but I was even more interested in the presentation of the early decades and the portrayal of various cause-and-effect trends across the decades.

I recommend this 4-sided DVD set, and think it is worth your time. It comes with a table of contents that lists the 100+ chapters, and a very detailed 35-page index. I wish it or its Web site ...included more depth about the myriad of topics that are touched upon, or at least references for further reading, but I guess that's what the library is for.

I find this set of DVD's as a good (not great) review of the 20th century. The 80's and 90's do have a liberal bias, but the rest of the decade is very well balanced. My only dislike is calling the 1920's presidents "the best of the second-raters". Any true scholar of the 20's would see the decided lack of understanding with that era. As a student and teacher of history (MS in Social Science and MA in Education) I tend to look for extreme bias as the hallmark of a lack of scholarship - this series is one that I use in class to INTRODUCE the era. For this purpose alone it is well worth the money.

I heartily recommend it for use in the classroom and as a way to familiarize oneself with the era.

My middle-school-aged son is studying American History, so during a recent sick episode, I brought home these tapes. He was completely engaged and watched all the episodes in a 2-day period. I consider myself a political moderate, and had read some of the reviews accusing the producers of serious left-wing bias, so I was pleasantly surprised by the balance and moderation in the reporting. I did not feel any need to jump in and present alternative viewpoints -- I was very impressed. I thought it was quite fair, given that it covered such an enormous length of time.

As the main review of this video indicates, the entire series is presented from a single leftist (not liberal, but truly leftist) perspective. In addition, executive producers WALEED ALI and MALIK ALI paint a very anti-Israel -- bordering on anti-Semetic -- picture of events, and never miss an opportunity to denounce Israel while glorifying Yassir Arafat and the PLO. The more recent footage of the 1980's and 1990's is clearly anti-Reagan and anti-Bush. And all the failings of Clinton are brushed aside and blamed on the media rather on the man himself. If you want a balanced perspective, buy some other video (if there is one). This one was just too one-sided, even for a liberal-leaning individual like me.

I am an American History teacher and this is an indispensable resource for me. I use it for my Global History classes as well.

Overall, this is a pretty good survey of most of the 20th century, although, like any attempt to capture 100 years on 10 VHS tapes, it cannot please everyone. Some interesting and important things are left out, but for the most part, it is a useful and entertaining series--at least up to 1980.
In the 1980s and 1990s videos, the film takes a decidedly leftist slant (it is there all along slightly, but not excessively so). The most glaring example comes when the first Gulf War is described as a set of war crimes by the United States, but the slant is clear throughout those two volumes (even if Clinton is linked with Nixon in the opening montage).
I still enjoy the series, and say this as a conservative and a professional historian and teacher (M.A. in history, M.Ed. in secondary education), but am sorry that the producers damaged their credibility with such obviously partisan approaches to the last two decades of the century.

I purchased two of these DVD sets. Sent one to my Dad for his birthday and had one sent to myself. Both sets have one dvd that does not work. I emailed the seller a few days ago and have not even received an acknowledgement of my complaint.

Still hopeful.

I apreicated the visual artistry of this film. It provides stunning video reels from the 20th century. As I listened to the commentary though, I found myself saying "wow this is very onesided." I did some research and found that every professor interviewed in the film had a leftist, even marxist, point of view. The greatest example of misinformation is the videos unrelenting villification of employers during the 1920's & 30's great depression. The video makes mention of the "captialist class" and the "working class." The video portrays the Communist party as a great force for change in America and lets Lenin & Stalin off the hook for any and all atrocities which they committed. The video portrays the vietnam war as if Nixon started and escalated the entire thing. Making almost no criticism of Kennedy of Johnson. I was planning on showing this video to my 11th grade US History classes, but now I am having very serious doubts. World War I, The New Deal, and WWII seem to be portrayed with accuracy--after that there is a noticeably slant. I have thought about using this film as an exmample of author bias and have my students write about the various slants on history this video takes. I hope this review is helpful to all my fellow teachers.

At 11 hours in length, this series had the potential to be an excellent overview of the most eventful one hundred years in human history. Unfortunately, a preoccupation with race relations and anti-war and labor movements as seen from a uniformly leftist perspective renders this a highly unwatchable series for serious historians and newcomers alike. Not that these events were unimportant, but the documentary is so leftist in its perspective that it tends to trivialize the great conflicts of the century as if the final outcome of the various movements should have been clear to everyone all along. A really sorry effort of a documentary. Unless you like unchallenging documentaries that make little effort to delve into the complexities of the 20th century, avoid this turkey at all costs.

I loved the VHS version of this documentary, so I ordered the DVD. I was truly astonished to see that it had been entirely re-written from a leftist (not liberal, but leftist) perspective that, among other things, lets Marx and Lenin off the hook for the misery they wrought on millions. Please buy the VHS original version and forget this revisionist attempt at re-writing history. Lincoln said, "If history isn't true then it isn't history." This could be said of this documentary.