From the very beginning, America is a nation shaped by adversity. These are the stories of the challenges that helped shape a nation. See how our forebears survive the "starving time" of the first colonies; battle their mother country for independence; head out to the frontier and west into the unknown; and spark a resistance to slavery that brings the United States to the brink of civil war.

America is forged in the fires of adversity. These stories chart the challenges that helped shape a nation. In the mid-1800s, America faces its darkest hour yet. Abraham Lincoln is elected President of a United States on the brink of Civil War; the nation that emerges now creates great wealth--but not for everyone; Teddy Roosevelt steps forward, bringing fierce leadership on behalf of the working man--his aim: to hold the nation together.

As the twentieth century continues, America faces perhaps its most daunting challenges yet. The 1930s brings the greatest economic crisis in its history. FDR offers the troubled nation a New Deal, but there are clouds on the horizon. Pearl Harbor is a lightning bolt to the American soul, and in command of the allied invasion, General Dwight D Eisenhower. The U.S. elects its youngest commander-in-chief, 46-year-old John F. Kennedy. On a bridge over the Alabama river, Martin Luther King's fight for equal rights will face its fiercest test. Then, on a bright September morning in 2001, America faces a new crisis: sudden, overwhelming and deadly.

October, 1962: For thirteen days a desperate showdown puts the world on the brink of nuclear war.

The sensational courtroom battle between William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow over the teaching of evolution in a small Tennessee town underscored a deep schism within the American psyche -- religion versus science, church versus state.