America's greatest early authors and their works come alive in Great American Authors 1650-1845. Host Jane Kaczmarek takes us from when the nation was founded to the middle of the 19th Century as seen through the eyes of literary giants such as Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. As the American colonies moved toward becoming an independent nation, a unique and distinctive voice poured forth from the pens of its authors. Their inspiring stories and poems could have only come from the heart and soul of this fledgling country.

Between the War of 1812 and the Mexican American War that ended in 1848, America experienced an exuberant period of growth, and it was during this time that American authors produced the nation's first great wave of classic literature. In this program, literary giants such as Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow make their mark on the American psyche. Contrasting dark and enlightening themes such as slavery, injustice, freedom, transcendentalism and death are explored and brought to the fore in the works from these renowned authors.

After the Civil War, the modern American novel began to take shape, with Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain and Henry James leading the way. Authors from all over the country and from various walks of life began publishing books, fulfilling the dreams of James and Emerson who talked about authorship from the everyday man.

As America moves onto the world stage, its authors struggle with the problems that accompany modernization and industrialization. William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandberg, Edith Wharton and Henry Miller, among others, wrestled with the uncomfortable and sometimes controversial subjects of poverty, corrupt government, miserable working environments and sexuality.

The most turbulent period in American history encompassed the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression. It gave rise to America's greatest writers, known collectively as the lost generation, consisting of greats such as William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, Pearl Buck and Steinbeck. Rejecting traditional storytelling, this "Lost Generation" of authors developed new formulas for novels and characters, in many, works some of which are "Grapes of Wrath," "Look Homeward, Angel" and "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil."

America entered the technological age through the darkness of WWII and its aftermath. Science fiction and plays became widespread through popular culture and mass media, with Ray Bradbury, James Thurber and Tennessee Williams leading the way. Though alcoholism, broken families, personal, political and wartime trauma would weigh on the authors of this era, classic works such as "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "The Martian Chronicles," and "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" still stand to show the undying talent and fortitude of their authors.

If the lost generation authors were searching for identity and meaning, the group of authors in this program rejected everything about mainstream America. Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsburg, among many others, wrote to rebel against the unrealistic expectations of American culture to hold people to defined, cookie-cutter molds. Ultimately, their works would speak to the baby boomer generation, on topics of being "beat down by establishment (the beat generation)," racism and segregation, homosexuality, drug use and individualism. America rattled as nuclear power, rock and roll, youth culture, civil rights and mass media reinvented the idea of being an American.

This generation of writers witnessed and participated in WWII, The Korean War, The Cold War, The Civil Rights movement, and Vietnam. These experiences shaped them intellectually, spiritually and emotionally in ways that were translated into their writing. This final chapter of Great American Authors features Truman Capote, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, and Toni Morrison, among others, and shows how modern-day American authors have created literary themes based on experiences and social climates wholly unique to their day and age.

The normal heart is a muscle about the size of a fist. With every beat it drives three ounces of blood through its intricate chambers and around five quarts throughout the entire body. Though we know much about how it operates, the heart is, nonetheless, a miraculous organ that has baffled the generations of scientists who have tried to mechanically replicate its power and efficiency. Endlessly Beating examines the heart as a muscle - pumping almost 100,000 times a day, pushing approximately five quarts of blood in an endless course to deliver oxygen to every cell of the human body. This hour tells the story of the normal heart through the histories of three people with end-stage heart failure, where a pump may be a temporary remedy, but in the long term, a transplant is almost always necessary. The three patients profiled live on the edge of life, existing in a compromised state that will inevitably need drastic intervention. Of the three individuals this hour follows, one will eventually receive the life-saving gift of a transplant; another must depend on an experimental new device to stay alive until a new heart can be found; and the third recovers with the aid of a heart pump, which lets his once-failed heart return to normal.

The past 50 years have brought enormous advances in our ability to understand the precisely timed dance that squeezes the heart muscle and pushes out blood to the lungs and the rest of the body. Dramatic new treatments have been developed to help sustain its vital rhythm and to prolong life. These treatments, in turn, have inspired new, very modern dilemmas for patients and doctors alike. Even with advances, arrhythmias lead to 300,000 cases of sudden cardiac death in America each year. In this hour, learn how the body's internal electrical system synchronizes the four chambers of the heart pushing blood throughout the entire body - once a second, 100,000 times a day, three billion times over a lifetime.

A heart attack can strike at any time and without warning. In minutes it can irreparably damage our hardest working muscle - the heart. And for many, a heart attack is the first sign of heart disease - the world's number one killer. This hour of THE MYSTERIOUS HUMAN HEART explores the causes of heart disease. How does cholesterol affect the heart? Obesity? Smoking? High blood pressure? How does stress affect the heart? Genetics? The program examines the causes behind the growing epidemic and what the world's leading scientists are doing to fight it.

The beauty of cell animation is that it can make the implausible seem possible. So the spirits of the haunted wood and the bewitching transformations of Titania, Oberon and the innocent tradesman Bottom, come to life with a treatment that complements Shakespeare's spectacular imagery.

A comic tale of youthful love, with the Forest of Arden as its sylvan stage. The idyllic backgrounds and wistful moods of Rosalind and Celia are sympathetically created by the unusual and visually appealing medium of painting in oils on cells.

All animation techniques are painstaking, but that of painting on glass is especially so. This unusual medium succeeds impressively in capturing the ghostly presence of Hamlet's father and the agonized indecision of Hamlet himself, in this classic depiction of corruption and revenge.

Shakespeare's dramatization of the alliances and intrigues that surrounded and finally destroyed the great Roman General is rendered with style and subtlety by superb cell animation. This study of personal power versus the good of the state is still as provoking as ever.

The richly rewarding technique of painting on glass has been uniquely explored for this blackest of black comedies. No compassion is shown by the hunchback King Richard, whose unquenchable thirst for power destroys his wife, his brother, his best friend and his nephews, the little princes in the tower.

The all-enveloping evil of Shakespeare's bloodiest work is captured with arresting and graphic intensity by powerful cell animation. Awash with murder, madness and dark forces, it is easy to understand the superstition that causes those in the theatre to refer to Macbeth with an unusual respect.

The warmth of a Mediterranean setting contrasts with the coldness in Iago's heart, as he relentlessly turns his noble master, Othello, against the beautiful and innocent Desdemona. All the emotional intensity of Shakespeare's study of jealousy is conveyed vividly by striking cell animation.

The world's best-known love story. Rich cell animation captures the tension and romance felt by two young citizens of Verona, oppressed by family rivalries, yet bound by an all-consuming love. The contrasts between raging passions and tender moments are sensitively portrayed.

Love blows hot and cold for the impulsive couple Petruchio and Kate. Convincing puppet animation catches the mood of their stormy relationship in a play that uses comic twists and turns to chart the often surprising course of a powerful love affair.