Best movies & TV Shows like The Men Who Built America

Mary Rafferty comes from a poor family of steel mill workers in 19th Century Pittsburgh. Her family objects when she goes to work as a maid for the wealthy Scott family which controls the mill. Mary catches the attention of handsome scion Paul Scott, but their romance is complicated by Paul's engagement to someone else and a bitter strike among the mill workers.

Chronicles over four centuries of African American influence on the development of the modern-day United States. Before Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, St. Augustine, FL had built a multicultural colony of free and enslaved men and women. This small colony would eventually set the stage for the first Underground Railroad in the late 1600s. Then, 300 years later, be the epicenter of events that would lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The third installment from executive producers Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Mark Herzog, following in the footsteps of critically-acclaimed series THE SIXTIES and THE SEVENTIES, tackles 10 years shaped by exceptionalism and excess. Like its predecessors, THE EIGHTIES intersperses rare archival newsreel footage, interviews, and comments by historians, journalists, politicians, celebrities and others, painting a perspective-rich picture of a vibrant decade. Episodes examine the age of Reagan, the AIDS crisis, the end of the Cold War, Wall Street corruption, the evolving TV and music scene, and everything in between.

The epic story of post-Civil War America, focusing on Cullen Bohannon, a Confederate soldier who sets out to exact revenge on the Union soldiers who killed his wife. His journey takes him west to Hell on Wheels, a dangerous, raucous, lawless melting pot of a town that travels with and services the construction of the first transcontinental railroad, an engineering feat unprecedented for its time.

HISTORY’s longest-running series moves to H2. Modern Marvels celebrates the ingenuity, invention and imagination found in the world around us. From commonplace items like ink and coffee to architectural masterpieces and engineering disasters, the hit series goes beyond the basics to provide insight and history into things we wonder about and that impact our lives. This series tells fascinating stories of the doers, the dreamers and sometime-schemers that create everyday items, technological breakthroughs and manmade wonders. The hit series goes deep to explore the leading edge of human inspiration and ambition.

A documentary series focusing on the ongoing Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, evolving music industry, the Iran Hostage Crisis, the sexual revolution, and the rise of foreign and domestic terrorism.

TV's most-watched history series brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today.

Seven Wonders of the Industrial World is a 7-part British documentary/docudrama television miniseries that originally aired from 4 September 2003 to 16 October 2003 on BBC. The programme examines seven engineering feats that occurred during the Industrial Revolution.

Monarchy is a Channel 4 British TV series, 2004-2006, by British academic David Starkey, charting the political and ideological history of the English monarchy from the Saxon period to modern times. The show also aired on PBS stations throughout the United States, courtesy of PBS-member station WNET. In Australia, all four seasons were broadcast on ABC1 from May 2005 onwards.

The story of the Second World War through the personal accounts of a handful of men and women from four American towns. The war touched the lives of every family on every street in every town in America and demonstrated that in extraordinary times, there are no ordinary lives.

America: The Story of Us is a six-part, 12-hour documentary-drama television miniseries that premiered on April 25, 2010, on History channel. Produced by Nutopia, the program portrays more than 400 years of American history. It spans time from the successful English settlement of Jamestown beginning in 1607, through to the present day. Narrated by Liev Schreiber, the series recreates many historical events by using actors dressed in the style of the period and computer-generated special effects. The miniseries received mixed reviews by critics; but it attracted the largest audiences of any special aired by the channel to date.

Noted Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has been helping people discover long-lost relatives hidden for generations within the branches of their family trees. Professor Gates utilizes a team of genealogists to reconstruct the paper trail left behind by our ancestors and the world’s leading geneticists to decode our DNA and help us travel thousands of years into the past to discover the origins of our earliest forebears.

Oliver Stone's re-examination of under-reported events in American history.

Andrew Marr's History of the World is a 2012 BBC documentary television series presented by Andrew Marr that covers 70,000 years of world history from the beginning of human civilisation, as African nomadic peoples spread out around the world and settled down to become the first farmers, up to the twentieth century.

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century is a 1996 documentary series that aired on PBS. It chronicles World War I over eight episodes. It was narrated by Dame Judi Dench in the UK and Salome Jens in the United States. The series won two Primetime Emmy Awards: one for Jeremy Irons for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance, the other for Outstanding Informational Series. In 1997, it was given a Peabody Award.

In a quest for world domination, the Nazis built some of the biggest and deadliest pieces of military hardware and malevolent technology in history. This is the stories of the engineers who designed them and how these structures sparked a technological revolution that changed warfare forever.

Take a journey back in time and immerse yourself in a 150-year-old battle that nearly split our nation in two. This three-part series explores famous and little known aspects of the Civil War, from the perspectives of the Union, the Confederacy and the millions of enslaved people struggling for freedom. Hosted by Ashley Judd, Trace Adkins, and Dennis Haysbert, all of whom had ancestors greatly affected by the war, this series delivers fresh insights and untold tales, brought to life through dramatic recreations and the Smithsonian Institution's vast collection of artifacts.

Chronicles the lives of Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, three members of the most prominent and influential family in American politics. It is the first time in a major documentary television series that their individual stories have been interwoven into a single narrative. This seven-part, fourteen hour film follows the Roosevelts for more than a century, from Theodore’s birth in 1858 to Eleanor’s death in 1962.

A 7-part series telling dramatic and diverse stories of struggle and survival during the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. From the producers of Eyes on the Prize, this series was met with critical acclaim and won both an Emmy Award for writing and a duPont-Columbia Award.

The story of a teenager wrongfully charged with theft and jailed at Riker's Island prison for over 1,000 days.

An immersive 360-degree narrative telling the epic story of the Vietnam War as it has never before been told on film. Featuring testimony from nearly 80 witnesses, including many Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, as well as Vietnamese combatants and civilians from both the winning and losing sides.

This documentary series showcases how key technological innovations enable giant superstructures to be built. Footage filmed during construction along with CGI reveal the building process with astonishing detail.

A look at the lives of iconic pioneers such as Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark, Tecumseh, Davy Crocket and Andrew Jackson as they traveled across America.

The fascinating stories of the families behind the food that built America, those who used brains, muscle, blood, sweat and tears to get to America's heart through its stomach, those who invented new technologies and helped win wars.

This five-part series traces the story of Asian Americans, spanning 150 years of immigration, racial politics, international relations, and cultural innovation. It is a timely, clear-eyed look at the vital role that Asian Americans have played in defining who we are as a nation. Their stories are a celebration of the grit and resilience of a people that reflects the experience of all Americans.

Decades after the assassination of African American leader Malcolm X, an activist embarks on a complex mission seeking truth in the name of justice.

The personal stories behind eight cases of wrongful conviction that the Innocence Project and organizations within the Innocence Network have worked to highlight and overturn.

A look at 400 years of human trafficking from Africa to the New World with each episode following three separate story lines: the quest for a sunken slave ship, a personal journey by Samuel L. Jackson and a historical investigation led by investigative journalists Simcha Jacobovici and Afua Hirsch.

When the United States of America was founded, the ideals of freedom and equality did not apply to all people. These are the stories of the brave Americans who fought to right the nation’s wrongs and enshrine the values we hold most dear into the Constitution — with liberty and justice for all.

The stories behind innovations such as TV, radio, phones, airplanes, motorcycles and power tools as well as the inventors including Nikola Tesla, William Harley, Alexander Graham Bell, Duncan Black and Alonzo Decker.

The stories behind the iconic structures and engineering feats that have shaped and defined our nation and our world.

Explore the revolutionary life of one of the 18th century’s most consequential and compelling personalities, whose work and words unlocked the mystery of electricity and helped create the United States.

The true story of America's iconic 16th president as told by weaving together both scripted dramatizations of important moments in his life and commentary by authoritative historians and public figures.

Divulges surprising origin stories of the American alcohol, gambling, sex, and tobacco industries and the ambitiously notorious entrepreneurs who built some of history's biggest fortunes on the nation's cravings.

A chronicle of John F. Kennedy's life, including his youth, ascension into politics, presidency, and his lasting impact on history.