Book Ken Burns

Ken Burns is America's best-known documentary filmmaker, a storyteller who has spent five decades chronicling the nation's history and culture, most often for PBS. A Hampshire College graduate, he co-founded the production company Florentine Films in Walpole, New Hampshire, in 1976, and his first major project grew from David McCullough's book about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. His landmark series The Civil War (1990) was followed by Baseball (1994), Jazz (2001), The War (2007), The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009), Prohibition (2011), The Roosevelts (2014), The Vietnam War (2017), Country Music (2019) and The American Revolution (2025). He also co-directed The Central Park Five in 2012. His films have collected eight Emmy Awards, three Peabody Awards, two Grammy Awards and two Oscar nominations, along with the Lincoln Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Humanities Medal. In 2016 he delivered the Jefferson Lecture, and he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. As a speaker, Burns brings a deep command of the American story and a gift for drawing lessons from the past that resonate with audiences today.