From pbs comes award winning director ken burns' 12 hour epic saga of america's most vast and turbulent region, beginning before european settlement and continuing into the 20th century'. '.strtoupper('a') chronicle of the turbulent history of one of the most extraordinary landscapes on earth, a mythic landscape, simultaneously enticing and forbidding, filled with stories of both heartbreaking tragedy and undying hope'. '.strtoupper('b')eginning in the era when the land belonged only to native americans and ending in the 20th century, the film is populated by unforgettable historical characters, some famous and others relatively unknown from gold seekers to cowboys to homesteaders to indian leaders whose competing dreams transformed the land, and turned the west into a lasting symbol of the nation itself, a tragic, inspiring intersection where the best of us met the worst of us and nothing was left unchanged'. '.strtoupper('a') sweeping, thoughtful, often moving look at america's conquest of the west wonderfully narrated by peter coyote thetimes