The Other Half of History Daily Blog
Thoughts on modern politics from a historical perspective.
An Accurate Account of “The Men Who Built America” Part 1
The History Channel recently aired a dreadfully inaccurate mini-series called The Men Who Built America. It was billed as a historical account of the careers of businessmen Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, JP Morgan, and Henry Ford; but it was basically all fiction.
I love America’s great rags-to-riches success stories, so I tuned in eagerly to see how the History people would tell them. After each of the four episodes I vented my disappointment by publishing a blog post exposing some of the more glaring inaccuracies. In my post about the last episode I lamented that an honest and accurate account of this era would have been far more entertaining that the fiction History put on the air.
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The Men Who Built America Episode IV – Still Phony
This is the fourth in a series of reviews of the History Channel’s four-part series The Men Who Built America.
Click here to read Al Fuller’s review of the first episode.
Click here to read Al’s review of the second episode.
Click Here to read Al’s review of the third episode.
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The History Channel aired the fourth and final episode of its The Men Who Built America series Sunday night, and like the first three installments, this one is terribly inaccurate. It’s a crying shame that the series contained so little real history; there are no end of fascinating and true stories about the great nineteenth century entrepreneurs, and an accurate version of this series would be good TV.
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The Men Who Built America Episode III – Less than Accurate
The History Channel aired the third installment of its The Men Who Built America series Tuesday, and, like the first two, this episode was less than accurate. In my review of the first episode I describe the many creative liberties the producers took in their efforts to jazz up the stories for a television audience. The second part of this four part series was even more inaccurate, just “fiction in a period setting.”
The third part is not as completely un-historical as the second, but there are several places where accuracy is sacrificed for the sake of drama.
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The Men Who Built America Episode Two: Twice as Phony
The History Channel aired the second episode of its “Men Who Built America” series on Tuesday, and there was very little history in it.
In my review of the first episode I said the makers were “more concerned with telling a dramatic story than they were with historical accuracy.” The second episode is far worse in this regard. It’s basically just fiction in a period setting.
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The Men Who Built America: Great Stories, Too Much Poetic License
The History Channel aired the first episode of its “The Men Who Built America” series last week, and I tuned in eagerly to watch it.
The series will profile the careers of railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, oil man John D. Rockefeller, steel maker Andrew Carnegie, investment banker JP Morgan, and car maker Henry Ford. The opening episode focuses on Vanderbilt and Rockefeller.
As my regular readers know, I’m a huge fan of entrepreneurs who have gone from rags to riches in this country. I’ve read dozens of books about this era in American history, including biographies of most of the primary and secondary characters in this series. If rock stars have their groupies, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller have me.
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