0 voters
Every one that I’ve seen have been fantastic although I haven’t seen “Prohibition” or “The Roosevelts”. I’m torn between “The Civil War” and “Baseball”. I loved “Baseball” so much that I bought the book so I’m going to vote for it. My wife loved it and she’s not even remotely a baseball fan.
I have only seen parts of Prohibition but thought it was fascinating. My personal favorite was Baseball because I learned a lot about the Deadball Era and I loved the stories. The Civil War was great too - loved Shelby Foote doing interviews with his Southern drawl. Every one of Burns’ documentaries is great.
I thought Vietnam was probably his weakest, but I think that’s probably because of personal biases. I’ve seen too many documentaries on shows on Vietnam that the topic has become almost cliched at this point. I mean no disrespect to anyone who served or was impacted by that effort, of course.
I went with Baseball, there’s no doubt it’s flawed and has way too much of a Northeast bias. And, ‘it’s a beautiful game’ should never be used as a drinking game because you’ll end up in the ER.
But, it’s still an amazing look at the sport as well as post civil war America. The segments are long enough to have some meat to dig into but don’t get into annoying minutia
Recently rewatched Jazz before it went bye bye on Amazon prime. Such a tough topic to cover adequately for those who don’t have any music theory knowledge at all
Id vote The Civil War but they are all great. I havent seen Country Music due to my irrational prejudice against the music. 
I also like the Baseball one enough to have bought the book.
The Jazz one was great as was The Civil War.
Not a major fan of country music either but I’d recommend the documentary - it was informative and interesting even if you’re not a fan of the genre.
It was hard to get past the music though. I couldn’t stand large parts of that one.
This was an extremely difficult choice to make because I loved the Civil War, Prohibition and the Vietnam War all so much.
I wanted to vote for The War, but somehow managed to cast a vote for National Parks (which would be my #2 choice) instead.
I liked how The War framed the story with the lives that went on in the 4 cities back home. And while I do agree that the sentiment that National Parks are America’s best idea, for some reason the series didn’t click with me as much I expected it to. It’s been a decade since I watched it, maybe I should go back and give it another shot.
A couple of my other favorite series by Ken Burns that weren’t listed in the poll are The West and Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery.
National Parks didn’t do it for me either. Very few countries have the land area of the USA and most of those areas aren’t good places to build a city anyway.
Does PBS have all the Burns locked up exclusively with their own streaming service now? I notice they’re gone from Amazon Prime
Last month I just got back from Grand Teton and Yellowstone and watched the National Parks series immediately afterward. Knowing that we possibly couldn’t go led me to consider they might have never existed, and that generated an emotional response in me. Plus great photography!
I voted for Civil War though.
The PBS Docs have their own Prime channel now. They have a free week trial and it’s $3.99/mo after that. They have all the Ken Burns series as well as most of the other documentary films and series.
Thank you. I believe its on Amazon Prime so Ill give it a watch. 
I haven’t seen Viet Nam yet, so went with Civil War. They are all pretty good, but I didn’t like The War. Thought is was corny. Like someone said above, if Lewis and Clark were listed, I’d probably have gone with that.
I like all the ones I have seen, but went with The Civil War because it set the tone for the others. Baseball was probably second, with Jazz the third. But it’s hard to rate them when they are all good. Has anyone ever seen his one part item about building the Brooklyn Bridge? I heard somewhere, although I have no cite, that after he made his winning pitch to the money guys, for that show, he left and they asked each other “Did we just give money to this young guy to make a show about the Brooklyn Bridge?”
In The Civil War I learned a lot I had not heard before. And seeing the part about the Andersonville prison made it more real, since my great-great grandfather was incarcerated there.
The Brooklyn Bridge was was pretty good also.
Damn I really need to watch more of his stuff.
Horatios drive (not listed, hes done a couple dozen I think) was the best but I’ve only seen a half dozen or so.
Unless you mean which is his best of his multi part documentaries? in that case, ‘the war’ was my favorite. But I’ve only seen 3 of his multi part ones (prohibition, the war, civil war)
“Prohibition” is great. I always refer people to it when they say that “things like that didn’t happen back then.”
The recent Mayo Clinic doco was also excellent.
Love, love every thing Burns does.
I voted for the Civil War.
The Country Music one was just fascinating.
But really the only one I was half-hearted about was Baseball. I found it interesting and learned a lot.
I learned the most from The Civil War and Country Music. In Canada, this war is not usually studied in depth, and I did not know about the roots of country.
I though the Vietnam War did an excellent job of reconciling very different perspectives, including that of North and South Vietnamese. I’ve read a number of histories but some tended to focus mainly on the experience of American soldiers. I like the Stanley Karnow history book and this series brought a similar perspective to life with so many well-chosen interviews.
Baseball was surprisingly good. I like jazz music and might have enjoyed that one the most, although the last episode compressed a little too much into a rushed summary (as did the country music one).