Burns has made documentaries about the Civil War, baseball, jazz — the usual Ken Burns fare. But this one is different. Critics called it “his most significant undertaking since ‘The Civil War’” and “maybe his best work”. One reviewer watched all 18 hours and said it kept returning to their thoughts, “often unbidden” — it feels like “a living document, about something that’s not entirely in the past and keeps haunting us”.
The New York Times called it “a kind of origin story for the culture wars that still have us asking: Which side are you on?”.
Think about that. The divisions we’re living through right now — the fractures, the distrust, the sense that the country is coming apart — they don’t start with Trump or Obama or even 9/11. They start in the jungles of Vietnam and the streets of America in the 1960s. This documentary shows you exactly how we got here.
What You Didn’t Learn in School
Unless you’re a serious history buff, what you know about Vietnam is probably: Communism. Domino theory. We lost. It was divisive.
Burns and Novick spent 10 years making this. They interviewed nearly 100 witnesses — American soldiers, Viet Cong fighters, protesters, journalists, Vietnamese civilians from both sides. They dug into recorded conversations of Presidents Johnson and Nixon, revealing that in private they admitted the war was unwinnable while in public they painted a rosy picture.
The series starts in 1858, with French colonial occupation, and shows you Ho Chi Minh asking the West for help with Vietnamese self-determination before being rebuffed. It traces the decades of deception, the official lies, the naive idealism, and the “shark-like inability to go any way but forward” that dragged the U.S. into a quagmire.
The total death toll? More than 3 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians, plus 58,000 Americans.
The Human Cost, Unfiltered
This isn’t a dry textbook. It’s visceral. It’s immersive. It’s “a 360-degree narrative” that puts you in the rice paddies, in the jungles, in the protest marches, in the White House Situation Room.
One critic described the experience as including “terror, horror, disbelief, discovery, disgust, marvel, pride, ambivalence and tears”. You’ll see archival footage that will make you pick your jaw up off the floor. You’ll hear from veterans breaking down in tears at the Vietnam War memorial, and an anti-war protester sobbing, “I’m sorry” for the way returning soldiers were treated.
And here’s what makes Burns a master: he doesn’t take sides. He lets soldiers and protesters, Americans and Vietnamese, speak for themselves. The series “does not do anything whatsoever to demean, demonize, or denigrate the service of the American men and women who served”. It also humanizes “what was often a faceless enemy, interviewing former Viet Cong as well as civilians whose lives were turned upside down”.
Why You Should Watch — Even If You’re “Not a History Person”
1. It’s free. PBS is streaming it right now. You can watch it on your TV, your laptop, or listen to it like a podcast while you commute or do dishes. The audio experience — with an original score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross — is itself a wild ride.
2. It’s not homework. Burns is a storyteller, not a lecturer. He makes history feel like a novel you can’t put down — even when it’s devastating.
3. It will make you a more thoughtful person. One critic put it perfectly: “Its multiplicity of voices, from both sides of the war and the war at home, might make you a more thoughtful, less judgmental person in the end if you pay attention”.
4. It’s about us, not them. As Bao Ninh, a writer who fought for the North Vietnamese, says in the film: “In war, no one wins or loses. There is only destruction”. This isn’t a story about who was right or wrong. It’s a story about what happens when a nation loses its way — and what it costs ordinary people.
The Truth Is Diabolical. But It’s Also Free.
Ken Burns said most Americans have chosen to forget Vietnam, mainly because of the outcome. “His documentary makes forgetting all but impossible”.
And that’s exactly why you need to watch it.
Because we can’t heal from something we refuse to understand. We can’t move forward when we’re still haunted by a past we’ve never truly confronted.
So go to PBS.org right now. Watch episode one. Let it pull you in. Experience it like a podcast if you have to — just experience it.
This isn’t just a documentary. It’s a reckoning. And it’s one of the most important things you’ll ever watch.
Here’s a direct link to episode one:
https://www.pbs.org/video/deja-vu-1858-1961-ucsq9s/
P.S. — It’s 18 hours. That sounds like a lot. But it took 10 years to make and covers a century of history. You can watch an episode a night, or binge it like the gripping drama it is. Either way, you won’t forget it.
Originally published on Medium. It lives here now — new essays land in the Journal first.
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