mdh627

I have been a fan of Ken Burns ever since his Civil War was broadcast. This was the first time I was so bored I didn't even watch the second episode. And I fell asleep during the first one.

As previous reviewers have stated, the most annoying thing was the yellow subtitles! In addition to being too small and difficult to read, they were flashed on the screen so fast I didn't have time to read them.

Another issue, in my opinion, was the number of "expert" commentators. I felt there were way too many. A couple of biographers and three or four art historians would have been sufficient. Surely they were all pretty much in agreement on the topic by now. They all sounded pretty much the same to me. No one really dissed him after 500 years!

And certainly, as another reviewer noted, some more time could have been spent on the most famous painting in the world, Mona Lisa. I learned more about Leonardo after reading Walter Isaacson's great biography and also got better images of all his works.

I am from Cincinnati. Each time I visited our zoo I stopped at the statue of Martha, the last passenger pigeon to survive the massacre of her species. She died here all alone. It makes me cry each time I think that of the millions of her kind she was all alone at the end, with no way to pass on to a new generation.

I cried in this show, too. Seeing the hunters sitting atop that huge mound of buffalo skulls was disturbing. And also the horrible accounts of the treatment of native Americans. Thank God for those wonderful people who persevered in their mission to save this wonderful creature. It's a shame the government wasn't as kind to the different tribes.