ijessie87 There was a million and one things happening in the old west, and for 8 hours this documentary ignores all of them except the Mormons, Blacks,natives, and Asians. sure they had their role but come on... Lets not write history in terms of race because in so doing it is incredibly racist. I found the series mind numbingly biased presenting little facts, or background on what was going on in the new frontier. We need a documentary showing the old west, this is not the one to do it. I found events and story lines I was hoping for missing completely. Where was the 'Wild West?' The gunslingers, the train robbers? So many criminals not even mentioned. Butch Cassidey, Sundance Kid, Jesse James, Doc Holiday. That list could go on forever. Also the only focused on two Indians: Sitting Bull and Chief Joseph. How about Geronimo? Crazy Horse gets barely a mention. So many events just glossed over and the viewer is left with mostly boring stories. Donner party barely gets a mention also. Oil is never even mentioned!

Joe Garrick Burns and Ives combine to produce a work that's very much up to Ken Burns' standards. As a viewing experience, it's everything you'd expect.And then there's the content.Much has been made about the supposed bias of Burns' presentation of the history of the west. A lot of time was spent on the way the US treated the indigenous populations, on the crimes of the US military, on the theft of lands, and the systematic attempts to eradicate native cultures. The loss of the age before white settlement is lamented. Is this a balanced perspective? Maybe not, although I don't think it's as biased as other reviews would have you believe. The triumphs of the west are told as well as the losses. Not all whites are painted as evil, nor are all natives painted as innocent. Events are often just told as they happened, and the viewer is left to draw their own conclusions. A lot of the content doesn't concern native Americans at all. More important that all of that, however, is that it's a story that needs telling. Americans have been indoctrinated with romantic fictions about the west for over a century. Giving Burns a chance to tell the other side of the story doesn't seem too much to ask. A few Hollywood movies that paint the indigenous people of America before westward expansion as noble savages - also a pleasant fiction, incidentally - does not make up for a century of bias, misinformation, and outright lies taught to American schoolchildren. What's worse is that for the most part, these fictions are still taught to American schoolchildren. At nearly nine hours, The West is an experience that will take up several of your evenings, but it's nine hours that may change the way you think about American history.

Scrivener3000 I had looked forward to the series as coming from a master of the documentary form. After all, Burns set in motion several documentary devices that have been widely copied since, such as first-person voice-over narration and having the narrator sign off each spoken part with his or her name. The Civil War series was truly an achievement.This thing, however-- It amounts to a chapters-long indictment of Europeans that verges on racism. It emerges after a while that the only good whites are dead whites. It's true that there was much brutality in white settlement of the west, and that horrible crimes were committed, usually unthinkingly, and many of them by whites. But is there really nothing more to the story than white-folks-bad/red-folks good? With a little effort, Ken Burns might have found, oh, I don't know, at least one good white person. Or, rather, one good white person who wasn't immediately tarred and feathered by his redneck fellows. It's as if you were to tell the story of World War II and focus on nothing but the fact that the American armed forces were rigidly segregated at the time. Oh, wait, that one's probably Ken Burns' next.

AlexMI Unique, amazing, massive project thoroughly documenting the expansion of the United States into the vast territories of the American WEST. Brutally honest, sympathetic insight into the fall of the many Native American peoples... some of the material is painful, sometimes bleak, but an absolute MUST SEE for any feeling person with even a passing interest in the history of America. Outstanding photography and the classic Ken Burns look & feel (executive & senior producer), but with director Stephen Ives' own insightful point-of-view. This series ranks right along side Burns' "Civil War" in scope and depth, IMHO. See it anyway you can, then demand the set on DVD! (DVD not available at this writing).