- Release Date: August 26th, 2008
- Publisher: PBS Paramount
- Price: $109.99 on Amazon
- Run Time: 2100 Minutes
- Genre: History, Biography, Documentary
- Special Features: Teacher’s Guides, Race Relations Documentary, Women’s Suffrage Documentary, Labor Rights Documentary, Profiles of key figures in Wilson’s Life, Scholars’ Forum on Wilson’s Legacy, JFK’s Legacy, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, Kennedy Family Tree, Interviews, Art and Photo Galleries,
Based on the name and the picture of the Presidents Collection, you can already tell what this DVD set is about. It is obviously about some of the most influential presidents of the 20th century. This collection includes documentaries/biographies on 10 presidents from the 20th century. Presidents featured in this collection include: Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman, The Kennedys, LBJ, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. Featuring their lives before, during, and after their presidencies you are given a good look into who these presidents really were. With over 15 discs of history, history buffs won’t be disappointed.
If you hate history and you haven’t been scared away yet I might as well tell you right now that you might as well stop reading this review now since you won’t like this DVD set. If you hated history class or even fell asleep during history class you might as well not even think about picking up this DVD set since you will pretty much get nothing out of it.
Now we are left with the people that can at least stand history. Overall I thought this DVD set was pretty average. I personally am one of those people that didn’t mind history class in school but you wouldn’t catch me doing anything regarding history outside school. The one thing I never liked about history was the emphasis on dates. I could never keep dates straight and I still can’t to this day.
Enough of my history experiences, you probably want to know about this DVD set. Well if you are a history buff and are particularly interested in presidents you are lucky since this DVD set is just for you. There is plenty of history to go around in this DVD set since if you would watch everything in this DVD set you would spend 35 hours. There is almost a whole day and a half of history in this DVD set.
If volume wasn’t enough there is also the fact of quality. These documentaries are all well done. They are actually from the American Experience series and they have won several awards, impressed historians, and delighted teachers. The quality of these documentaries are what you would expect from a PBS project. If you like PBS programming you shouldn’t be disappointed by these documentaries.
I will only briefly mention the special features since there are so many of them that it would probably take forever to go through them all. You can see the list of special features above at the top of this post. I would say that the special features are pretty good and would be pretty useful for teachers. Along with teaching guides I would think this DVD set would be pretty nice for the classroom especially if the class focused on one some of the presidents included in this set.
Overall there really isn’t a whole lot else to say about this DVD set. If you don’t like history you should stay as far away from this DVD set as possible since you will probably be bored and might even be put to sleep. If you don’t mind history I would be a little cautious about picking up this DVD set. With the price of $109 I would suggest you be a pretty big fan of history and past presidents. If you are a history buff though you should get your moneys worth since this is a very good DVD set for history buffs. I personally thought it was pretty average. It was a little slow at times but it was very informative.
