Ken Burns

Gr 8 Up—Ken Burns has been busy. The award-winning filmmaker's seven-part television series, The Roosevelts, recently premiered on PBS, and he has just released an app. The app is both a visual time line of American history and a thematic compilation of clips from his documentaries, which have been praised for their wide-angle treatments incorporating interviews and archival photos and videos.The time line is a string of discs featuring images from the documentaries, covering aspects of our nation's history from 1619 to the present. Each disc is a link to a short clip from one of Burns's feature-length films or series. Viewers can travel the time line through the centuries, hop from clip to clip pursuing their interests, or access all of the excerpts under a film title (selections from 25 films are available).The excerpts are also curated. Under the themes of "Art," "Hard Times," "Innovation," "Politics," "Race," "War," and "Leadership" are three to 20 scenes chosen by Burns. In his introduction to the app, the filmmaker states that these groupings, or "playlists," allow viewers to see history through a different lens.The playlists offer users opportunities to make numerous connections: those between the perception of the political situation during the prohibition era and our reading of the current political climate, the thread of race through the American narrative, and how war brings out the worst in humankind and sometimes the best. The free "lite" version of the app includes the entire "Innovation" playlist—14 scenes from 10 different films. Topics related to art, music, and sports (particularly baseball) also make regular appearances.Functionality is smooth, the clips load quickly, and the sound quality is excellent. A "Watch the Film" tab (on static screens) brings users to local PBS stations to view the full-length films, and/or to iTunes, Netflix, and Amazon, where they can purchase the episodes and/or series. A thoughtful look at the panorama of American history and one man's oeuvre.—Daryl Grabarek, School Library Journal