The story of settling, founding, and shaping of The United States of America has been told in countless ways over the years. Students see movies in school; read about it in books, networks run specials every Fourth of July as we celebrate our nation’s independence, but what History has undertaken is a contemporary look at over 400 years of history on our continent and the major events that shaped the lives we lead today.
History’s America: The Story of Us is an engrossing look at what it takes to build a nation and while it treads familiar territory, it does so with the aid of modern technology like impressive, although not perfect, uses of CGI as it tells the story of our country.
The series starts in the years leading up to the founding of the original thirteen colonies and ends with the shaping of America at the turn of the 21st Century. The only problem with the series is with nearly 400 years to cover, a lot of important events are merely mentioned or glossed over to make room for even bigger ones.
The CGI is one of the most impressive, and disappointing things at the same time. While its nice to get a cinematic take on the battles of Lexington and Concord complete with Matrix-like effects of musket balls flying through the air in bullet-time, at some points it feels overdone, ditto to the use of slow motion in combination with the aforementioned. Nevertheless, this never detracts from the impressive selection of events that are focused upon and for once in a long while, the interviews from real Americans (Michael Douglass, Colin Powell, et. al.) actually provide some powerful insight and are melded into the program rather nicely.