About Ken Burns

History made them famous. Ken Burns makes them real. For over 25 years, filmmaker Ken Burns has been producing films for PBS that are unafraid of controversy and tragedy. Use this web site to explore the body of Burns's work and to learn more about the subjects of his remarkable films.

The Dust Bowl

THE DUST BOWL, a two-part, four-hour documentary by Ken Burns, chronicles the environmental catastrophe that, throughout the 1930s, destroyed the farmlands of the Great Plains, turned prairies into deserts and unleashed a pattern of massive, deadly dust storms that for many seemed to herald the end of the world. It was the worst manmade ecological disaster in American history.

Prohibition

PROHIBITION is a documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed.

National Parks

The National Parks: America's Best Idea is the story of an idea as uniquely American as the Declaration of Independence and just as radical: that the most special places in the nation should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone.

The War

This monumental seven-part documentary series, directed and produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, tells the story of the Second World War through the personal accounts of men and women from four quintessentially American towns.

Baseball: The Tenth Inning

A new chapter in Burns�s landmark 1994 series, BASEBALL, THE TENTH INNING tells the tumultuous story of the national pastime from the 1990s to the present day. Introducing an unforgettable array of players, teams and fans, the film showcases the era's extraordinary accomplishments and heroics � as well as its devastating losses and disappointments.