KLS8800 I home-school my daughter and used this series to expand on this era of time in American History.Traditional schools just touch on these men. I wanted her to get the idea of who they really were, how driven they were and how visionary they had to be to achieve such greatness.Now that we are done with the series, we both feel more informed, and we will miss The Men Who Built America in both spirit and history.Side note: Great acting by all in the series, they brought their roles to life and gave them personality and depth.

dallasryan I was expecting the usual type series you get for series' like this which is the usual 'they are good, but it's kind of boring and hammy'. Not at all the case on this one. First of all, very interesting. I learned so much that I had no clue about before. The acting is actually pretty good, but what really drives this series home is the terrific narration, the fantastic editing, and the magnificent sound and music that ties along with it.This series is proof that if you have some patience, talent and money to put into the production, the possibilities are then limitless. And this production understands the great importance and power of a well thought out sound and music to play in the background. At times you feel like you're watching different mafia families go at it with each other. That you're watching the high powered cartels dish it out and it absorbs you in to where you don't want to stop watching. This is a brilliant series to watch and I was very pleasantly surprised by it.

jepackham In the John Rockefeller episode. Described as Rockefeller 'fueling Vanderbilt's trains' . This should have been 'filling'. Your sub editors need to stay awake. Otherwise this show is riveting. Demostrating it is innovative business men who make a country great, not politicians. Perhaps the phrase ' what is good for General Motors is good for America' was right after all.In the UK we have destroyed our industry. Any that we have is owned by overseas companies. They may provide jobs which provides some tax revenues, but profits go overseas. Under European Union rules, the government has to purchase from the lowest bidder. Recently, orders for new trains went to Siemens in Germany who have been able to automate their plant as a result, The UK producer is left in the dark ages.

Bob H Hitlan History that in no way challenges any of the accepted conceits of 2012. Which really is a shame. Decent popular history should show us that those ideas we always took for granted as to how and why thing happened in the past are very likely quite wrong. And what if the conventional wisdom is correct? Well, it really never is- conventional wisdom is the result of popular misconceptions and other filters, real history is always more nuanced and complicated than even well written history, let alone popular convention.Good popular history challenges our preconceptions. Instead, in the case of "The Men who Built America" we get a one dimensional reality; The story of the men who, while helping to build the country, created a series of evil empires that were finally brought down once and for all, and for the good of the common man, by the efforts of certain politicians. Fair enough. A good start. But when you are given a couple hours for each of five American icons, it would be better if the producers could have shown us how much of the reality went against the narrative presented here.Instead of presenting the public opprobrium against Standard Oil as springing solely from Rockefeller's sins against the working people, it would have been more accurate to show that the victims were seen as the small, independent businessman, not the worker who was treated as badly under them as under Rockefeller. In fact, I may have missed it, but how can one show the story of Rockefeller without a mention of Ida Tarbell? The story of Morgan seemed to be more than a bit off in the attempt by the writers to neatly shoehorn JP Morgan into the rest of the narrative. I am sure that his life was intertwined with the industrialists in many ways, but I think that Morgan and his ilk stood somewhat apart from the industrialists, keeping his people on their boards only to safeguard the investments that were made. Morgan and how he made money, was nearly entirely separate from the industrialists and is interesting in its own right.All in all, its a pretty fair show, given the typical History channel fare. At least its not Ancient Aliens. And accurate enough, I guess, except for the section on Morgan which I think badly distorted how he really was important to our history. But in giving us the most bland, vanilla version of the events it was another wasted opportunity by the History Channel.