New York: A Documentary Film on PBS

Filmmaker Ric Burns polishes off his 14 and one-half hour history of the Big Apple with two concluding episodes that take New York City through the 20th century. The first: “City of Tomorrow (1929-45)” focuses on Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who used his close ties to FDR to make the city “a gigantic laboratory of civic reconstruction”; and master builder Robert Moses, who “adapted a 19th century city to 20th century circumstances,” says historian Kenneth Jackson. The biggest one: the car. Says narrator David Ogden Stiers: “It challenged all previous assumptions about urban life.”