As country music’s popularity skyrockets, the genre confronts the question of whether it can also stay true to its roots. The success of the “New Traditionalists”—Reba McEntire, Randy Travis, the Judds, and Dwight Yoakam—suggests it can.

In Memphis, the confluence of blues and hillbilly music at Sun Studios gives birth to “rockabilly,” the precursor of rock and roll. Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash are at the forefront. Nashville has become Music City USA.

With the Vietnam War intensifying, America is more divided than ever. Country music is not immune to the divisions. Kris Kristofferson abandons his military career, becomes a writer whose lyricism sets a new standard for country songs.

After centuries of percolating in America’s immigrant and racial mix, particularly in the American South, what was first called “hillbilly music” begins reaching more people through the new technologies of phonographs and radio.

During a time of upheaval, country music reflects the changes in American society. Loretta Lynn performs songs that speak on behalf of women. Charley Pride becomes a country star. Merle Haggard becomes the “Poet of the Common Man.”

Vietnamese revolutionaries led by Ho Chi Minh end nearly a century of French colonial occupation. Vietnam is divided in two. Communists in the North aim to reunify the country, while America supports Diem's untested regime in the South.

With South Vietnam in chaos, hardliners in Hanoi seize the initiative and send combat troops to the South. President Johnson escalates America’s military commitment, authorizing bombing of the North and deploying ground troops in the South.

Embracing the spirit of the counterculture revolution during the Summer of Love, wealthy Marin County businessman Don McCoy transforms his life from conservative entrepreneur to beneficent hippie dropout, using his family inheritance to lease Rancho Olompali, a 700-acre estate north of San Francisco, to start a commune. He invites a couple dozen like-minded friends and families to join him in his dream of creating a community where they can live without...

Follow a classically-trained composer as he mounts Zane Grey’s frontier novel for the operatic stage. The composer and librettist, along with a team of designers, musicians, singers, and fine art painter Ed Mell, translate America's cowboy culture and sprawling beauty of the West ​into the realm of Puccini and Verdi.

Benjamin Franklin leaves London and returns to wartime Philadelphia where he joins Congress and helps Thomas Jefferson craft the Declaration of Independence. In Paris, he wins French support for the American Revolution then negotiates a peace treaty with Britain. He spends his last years in the new United States, working on the Constitution and unsuccessfully promoting the abolition of slavery.