This program examines Bush's service in World War II, and his early career in Texas, to his days in the Oval Office, first as Vice President to Ronald Reagan, then as the leader who presided over the first Gulf War. Drawing upon Bush's personal diaries and interviews with his closest advisors and most prominent critics, the film also explores Bush's role as the patriarch of a political family whose influence is unequaled in modern American life.

This episode explores Roosevelt's family background and education looking for clues as to how the coddled child of rich parents managed to climb the ladder to political success. It follows him from his very first run for political office as New York state senator through his years in Washington as assistant secretary of the navy, as he pursues one goal - the highest office in the land. It also tells the story of FDR's courtship of his distant cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt, and their troubled marriage, including FDR's affair with Eleanor's social secretary, Lucy Mercer. The affair, which nearly ended the marriage, encouraged Eleanor to embrace a life of her own and become politically active. The second hour begins with Roosevelt's bout with polio at age 39 and follows his relentless struggle to rehabilitate his body and his seemingly moribund political career and to teach himself to appear to walk. It also paints a portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt as she makes a life of her own, developing her own political skills while keeping her husband's name before the public through her involvement in reform causes. By the close of the program, a remarkable sequence of events leads FDR back from despair to win his party's nomination as president of the United States.

At a Las Vegas, Nevada, magic theater, host Mark L. Walberg and appraiser Nicholas Lowery reveal that the artistry - and value - of vintage magic posters is no illusion. Appraisers at the Las Vegas Convention Center don't need sleight-of-hand techniques to pull amazing discoveries out of the crowd, including drawings by the legendary folk musician Woody Guthrie, given to the owner's journalist father after an interview with Guthrie; an heirloom early-19th-century tavern clock made by Aaron Willard of the renowned Boston clock manufacturing family; and a fabulous five-carat, Asscher-cut diamond ring, inherited from the owner's grandfather, owner of a jewelry store/pawn shop in a Colorado mining town.

Indie rock stars the Decemberists showcase their latest album, The Crane Wife, and its distinctive storytelling prog-pop with their Austin City Limits debut. Best known for scoring the film Friday Night Lights, instrumental quartet Explosions in the Sky affirms its power as a live act with tunes from its newest disk, All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone.

As darkness fell on May 10, 1996, a fast moving storm of unimaginable ferocity trapped three climbing teams high on the slopes of Mount Everest. The climbers, exhausted from their summit climb, were soon lost in darkness, in a fierce blizzard, far from the safety of High Camp at 26,000 feet. World-renowned climber and filmmaker David Breashears, who aided the rescue efforts back in 1996, now returns to Everest to tell the fuller story of what really happened on that legendary climb. Through remarkably intimate interviews with the climbers and Sherpas - many who have never spoken before on American television - Breashears sheds new light on the worst climbing tragedy in Mount Everest's history.

Independent Lens will return on Tuesday, May 20 at 11 p.m. with A Dream in Doubt.

Based on three serialized Elizabeth Gaskell novels, "Cranford" chronicles the absurdities and tragedies in the lives of the people of Cranford during one extraordinary year. Cranford in the 1840s is a small Cheshire market town on the cusp of change. The railway is pushing its way relentlessly towards the town from Manchester, bringing fears of migrant workers and the breakdown of law and order.

In episode two, as winter approaches, Cranford is beset by sorrows and struggles to re-gain its confidence. When Dr. Harrison's housekeeper discovers a leg of mutton has been stolen on the very same night that storeowner Mr. Johnson is mugged, the ladies decide that a crime wave has hit Cranford.

They slice through the water's surface with explosive power, sail, spear and a half-ton of muscle flashing in the sun. Their journeys through the open ocean are epic, their life cycle, bizarre. They are the billfish - marlin, sailfish, spearfish and swordfish - the largest and most highly prized of all gamefish. Emmy award-winning filmmaker and biologist Rick Rosenthal brings these incredible sea creatures to the screen as he observes tiny billfish nurseries in the wild, dives deep into secret undersea canyons, films incredible color-changing behavior and embarks on a quest for an elusive thousand-pound "grander."

High in the Austrian Alps, a female red deer, a leader in her herd, gives birth to a calf. Her status makes him a prince among the other calves. The two are at the center of a wilderness story that features not only the wild alpine herds of majestic red deer, but also a variety of other wildlife that lives in the mountains, including roe deer, ibex, fox, chamois and marmots.

For more than a thousand years, the samurai sword has dominated the battlefields of Japan, instilled fear and terror into every enemy it faced and evoked a spiritual way of life that continues even today. With unparalleled access, NOVA travels deep into Japan's ancient foundries, follows the craft of the traditional swordsmiths and attends samurai fighting school to reveal the art and science behind making what many call the perfect sword.

Alaska's Mount McKinley, commonly referred to as Denali, is the highest and coldest peak in North America, and one of the deadliest mountains on earth. Each year more than 1,000 people attempt to summit it, many never to return alive. While some climbers die in accidents - sliding off icy cliffs, crushing bones against rocks, falling into hidden crevices or losing their way and succumbing to the cold - others, often in top physical condition, die from a strange disease that strikes at extreme altitudes. Now, as a new season dawns on the mountain, a team of doctors, rescuers, world-class mountaineers, military special forces and an astronaut, returns to save lives and, using themselves as subjects, decipher the deaths on Denali.