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.

Some scenes show (quite naturally)trains running through the countryside. Problem is they are modern British Trains running through mostly Scottish countryside. The image hardly fits with stories about Vanderbilt. Again with Carnegie, during his great strike initiated by Clay Frick, we are shown Andrew Carnegie as being in Dunfermiline, Scotland at that time. Indeed, he was in Scotland, but NOT Dunfermile. He was in Skibo Castle about 250 miles NORTH of Dunfermline, and more out of touch with Pittsburgh than is suggested. Also, Dunfermline is portrayed as a tiny fishing village in a sleepy little seaside scene. This is also very wrong. My point is, if History channel got the simple basics wrong, how can I believe the other, more significant facts. My overall impression of this series was that some basic facts were correct, but the entire story was not. In all, a poorly done show and well beneath the ability and competence of The History Channel and those who created the video.

The names we have come to take for granted, directly and indirectly still present in our lives. Their legacies which have actually influenced the way how we look at the world, the way we live, and how we look at money and influence. There is a reason why the 20th century is also called the 'American Century'. But how did the United States become the superpower as we know it? The documentary miniseries is divided into the five men who would come to form the backbone of the miniseries spanning from the end of the American Civil War to the First World War: Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan and Henry Ford. Men of varying backgrounds, but all being driven to make a mark for themselves, even when there are times the odds want to stack against them. But there are also the people who had shaped their lives, believed in them and in direct competition and conflict with them.The lives the five men featured are being told through the medium of dramatisation, narration, and told from the viewpoints of historians, biographers, prominent figures from politics and the world of business and even a Rockefeller descendant as well. The combination of all these along with the news clippings and footages of its time help to ensure that the documentary miniseries come alive on its own, like as if we are also bearing eyewitness to the pivotal moments of the lives the five men had led whether in good times or bad as how the men saw it themselves. The viewpoints of those who spoke about the men who did the things they did which coincide with the social and political attitudes of the day, complementing with its current relevance and the lessons one can take away from, ensure that the legacies the five men had left behind long after they were gone, are actually still with us even till this day. Each time we want to think that it is only happening in recent times, it challenges the very notion of it and making us wonder if we had seen it all before. The wealth gap, the ruthlessness of business people and the lengths they go to achieve what they want…it has always been with us.The stunning imagery and the outfits which represent the eras the five men live in help to reinforce of the viewer living in their moment, making us either want to root for them or not, depending on whether whatever they had done correspond or contradict with what we thought we have always know about the world we live in and what we have come to believe. The marvels of science and engineering, complementing with what the five men had done to make it happen. Then there is also the political aspects of their actions, which goes into the ethical realm.Whether we want to agree or disagree with the way they did things which are directly and indirectly of their own making and how it has affected us ever since, one cannot dispute that they have all done it in the manner they have felt able to make them one step ahead of everyone else. Like the final words in the documentary miniseries from one of those invited to talk about what the men had done, 'How big do you want to dream, and how hard do you want to work?'. Love them or hate them for what they did when they were alive and the legacies they left behind in the form of charities, educational institutions, companies in current existence in the world today which were once in their control or still in their name…it actually forms part of the many strands in the history of American capitalism in itself.Whether the interest is in American history in the realms of economics, with both of politics and science to an extent or just wanting to know and/or understand why some things happening the way they do economically while trying to make sense of the current economic times we are currently living in at the same time, this documentary miniseries is one to get the viewer interested. It may or may not help to answer everything the viewer want to know, but it will try to make sense in some aspects of it. It can get gripping to the extent that one can forget counting out the people who are playing especially the five men, the five major players featured in the miniseries are all actually real people after all.

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.