Fighting the American Revolution Again with Ken Burns

Several years ago on this blog and in my column for The Villager, I told the story of “29 and 0!”. As I was just starting my high school teacher career, a colleague and I heard a voice booming through the doorway into the teacher lounge. It was Tom, a veteran history and government teacher who was also the head baseball coach and a bit of a legend around town for his gruff but engaging presence, as well as his state championships.

When my colleague and friend Jane asked, “Uh, what, Tom? What are you yelling about? What’s 29 and O?” Tom, the high school’s lovable curmudgeon, glanced sideways at us with a suspicious scowl that melted into a mischievous grin. “I’ve been teaching American history for twenty-nine years,” he growled. “I’ve taught the Revolutionary War twenty-nine times.” He paused for effect. “America has never lost! We’re 29 and 0!”

It's in that spirit of teaching history as a living, breathing thing that I am anticipating the long-awaited release of legendary documentarian filmmaker Ken Burns The American Revolution, which premieres on PBS next weekend, November 16. For many historians, history fans, and average Americans feeling a bit anxious about the state of the union, the release couldn't come at a better time. Jennifer Shuessler of the New York Times recently spent time with Burns, exploring the question: "Can Ken Burns Win the American Revolution?"

“The American Revolution is encrusted with the barnacles of sentimentality and nostalgia,” he said. But his six-part, 12-hour documentary about the subject, which debuts on PBS on Nov. 16, will aim to strip that away — and hopefully bring some healing to our own fractured moment.

“We say, ‘Oh we’re so divided,’ as if we’re Chicken Little and this is the worst it’s ever been,” he said. “But the Revolution was a pretty divided time. The Civil War was a pretty divided time. Almost all of American history is division.”

Maybe storytelling, he said, can “help short-circuit the binaries we have today.”

The remarks were pure Burns — the kind of sunny all-American optimism that thrills his admirers, and draws eye-rolls among skeptics. But “The American Revolution,” which Burns directed with Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, is arriving at a moment when even attempting to bring a unifying story to a broad American middle feels like a radical act.