Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
For the 50th anniversary of the Society of the Cincinnati’s annual George Rogers Clark lecture, the principal script writer for Ken Burns’ American Revolution, Geoffrey C. Ward, along with award-winning historian and consultant Rick Atkinson, discuss the making of Burns' new twelve-hour documentary highlighting the American Revolution. The discussion was moderated by the Institute’s executive director, F. Anderson “Andy” Morse. Ken Burns' American Revolution premieres on November 16, 2025, on PBS.
About the Speakers:
Geoffrey C. Ward has collaborated with Ken Burns since 1984 and has been the sole or principal script writer for Burns’ documentaries, including Huey Long; Statue of Liberty; Thomas Hart Benton; The Civil War; Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio; Baseball; The West; Thomas Jefferson; Frank Lloyd Wright; Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony; Jazz; Mark Twain; Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson; The War; The Roosevelts; The Vietnam War; The U.S. and the Holocaust; and The American Revolution. Mr. Ward also wrote or co-wrote companion volumes for ten of these series.
He was senior picture editor at Encyclopedia Britannica in Chicago during the mid-1960s, founding editor of Audience magazine from 1970 to 1973, and managing editor and editor of American Heritage magazine from 1977 to 1982. For fourteen years he wrote a monthly column for American Heritage called “The Life and Times.” He was the principal or sole writer of Nixon; Lindbergh; Reminiscing in Tempo; The Kennedys; The Last Boss; TR; and Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided – all part of PBS’s “American Experience” series. For his work in documentary films, Ward has won two Writers’ Guild Awards, eight Christopher Awards, eight Emmys, and the Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Career Achievement in Writing conferred by the Writers’ Guild.
Mr. Ward is also an independent historian and biographer, the author of nine other books, among them A First-Class Temperament: the Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, which won the National Book Critics Circle and Los Angeles Times Awards for Best Biography, the Francis Parkman Award of the Society of American Historians in 1989, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Rick Atkinson is an award-winning journalist and author, who worked as reporter, foreign correspondent, and senior editor for more than twenty years at the Washington Post. His last assignments were covering the 101st Airborne during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and writing about roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007. He is the author of seven narrative histories about five American wars, his most recent book is The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780, which is the second volume in a planned trilogy on the American Revolution. His first volume, The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777, spent nearly three months on the New York Times bestseller list in 2019. Mr. Atkinson also served as a consultant to Ken Burns’ The American Revolution.
Mr. Atkinson’s awards include the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in history; the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting; and the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for public service, awarded to the Washington Post for investigative articles directed and edited by Atkinson on shootings by District of Columbia police officers. He is winner of the 1989 George Polk Award for national reporting, the 1989 John Hancock Award for excellence in business writing, the 2003 Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award, the 2007 Gerald R. Ford Award for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense, the 2010 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing, the 2013 New York Military Affairs Symposium award for lifetime achievement, and the 2014 Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement from the Society for Military History. In December 2015 he received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, previously given to Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison, and David McCullough. In 2019 he was named a Vincent J. Dooley Distinguished Fellow of the Georgia Historical Society.
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For the 50th anniversary of the Society of the Cincinnati’s annual George Rogers Clark lecture, the principal script writer for Ken Burns’ American Revolution, Geoffrey C. Ward, along with award-winning historian and consultant Rick Atkinson, discuss the making of Burns' new twelve-hour documentary highlighting the American Revolution. The discussion was moderated by the Institute’s executive director, F. Anderson “Andy” Morse. Ken Burns' American Revolution premieres on November 16, 2025, on PBS.
About the Speakers:
Geoffrey C. Ward has collaborated with Ken Burns since 1984 and has been the sole or principal script writer for Burns’ documentaries, including Huey Long; Statue of Liberty; Thomas Hart Benton; The Civil War; Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio; Baseball; The West; Thomas Jefferson; Frank Lloyd Wright; Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony; Jazz; Mark Twain; Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson; The War; The Roosevelts; The Vietnam War; The U.S. and the Holocaust; and The American Revolution. Mr. Ward also wrote or co-wrote companion volumes for ten of these series.
He was senior picture editor at Encyclopedia Britannica in Chicago during the mid-1960s, founding editor of Audience magazine from 1970 to 1973, and managing editor and editor of American Heritage magazine from 1977 to 1982. For fourteen years he wrote a monthly column for American Heritage called “The Life and Times.” He was the principal or sole writer of Nixon; Lindbergh; Reminiscing in Tempo; The Kennedys; The Last Boss; TR; and Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided – all part of PBS’s “American Experience” series. For his work in documentary films, Ward has won two Writers’ Guild Awards, eight Christopher Awards, eight Emmys, and the Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Career Achievement in Writing conferred by the Writers’ Guild.
Mr. Ward is also an independent historian and biographer, the author of nine other books, among them A First-Class Temperament: the Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, which won the National Book Critics Circle and Los Angeles Times Awards for Best Biography, the Francis Parkman Award of the Society of American Historians in 1989, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Rick Atkinson is an award-winning journalist and author, who worked as reporter, foreign correspondent, and senior editor for more than twenty years at the Washington Post. His last assignments were covering the 101st Airborne during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and writing about roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007. He is the author of seven narrative histories about five American wars, his most recent book is The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780, which is the second volume in a planned trilogy on the American Revolution. His first volume, The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777, spent nearly three months on the New York Times bestseller list in 2019. Mr. Atkinson also served as a consultant to Ken Burns’ The American Revolution.
Mr. Atkinson’s awards include the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in history; the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting; and the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for public service, awarded to the Washington Post for investigative articles directed and edited by Atkinson on shootings by District of Columbia police officers. He is winner of the 1989 George Polk Award for national reporting, the 1989 John Hancock Award for excellence in business writing, the 2003 Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award, the 2007 Gerald R. Ford Award for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense, the 2010 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing, the 2013 New York Military Affairs Symposium award for lifetime achievement, and the 2014 Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement from the Society for Military History. In December 2015 he received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, previously given to Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison, and David McCullough. In 2019 he was named a Vincent J. Dooley Distinguished Fellow of the Georgia Historical Society.
SUBSCRIBE to our channel: bit.ly/3DxZnrJ
Follow us on social media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmericanRevo...
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/americanrev...
Twitter: twitter.com/AmRevInstitute
Stay updated by joining our mailing list: bit.ly/3TpfhdL
Become an Associate of the American Revolution Institute: bit.ly/3Bonuqp
Visit our website: americanrevolutioninstitute.org
