American Presidents Portrayed on C-SPAN
Classrooms across the United States will get the chance to peer into the intimate lives of America's presidents, thanks to C-SPAN's new historical series, American Presidents: Life Portraits. Airing from March to December 1999, this new in-depth series provides classrooms with a fresh look at the American presidency through insights from biographers, historians, presidential papers, speeches, interviews, live programming and vignettes.
Each week, American Presidents focuses on one president, beginning with George Washington and continuing chronologically through all of the presidents, concluding with a summary of the series. For each episode, C-SPAN and the C-SPAN school bus will travel to presidential birthplaces, family homes, museums, libraries and other relevant sites. Throughout the week, the network will also air documentary-style vignettes and related programming such as Booknotes programs that highlight presidential biographers, symposiums and speakers.
Educators will be able to videotape each week's entire American Presidents-related programming every Friday at 8 PM ET, copyright free. C-SPAN also offers a Web site that serves as an online complement to the series, and features detailed information on all 41 presidents. C-SPAN Networks, Washington, DC, (202) 737-3220, www.americanpresidents.org.
This article originally appeared in the 06/01/1999 issue of THE Journal.