Henry Louis Gates Jr. Exploring Our Roots DVD Combo Pack

Description

• This Exploring Our Roots Pack includes
  African American Lives - An unprecedented four-part series uncovers a new level of personal discovery. Using genealogy, oral history, family stories, and DNA analysis to trace lineages through American history and back to Africa, the series provides life-changing journeys for a diverse group of highly accomplished African Americans including Whoopi Goldberg, Bishop T.D. Jakes, Quincy Jones, Dr. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Chris Tucker and Oprah Winfrey. (Rating: TV-PG+VL)
  
  African American Lives 2 - Henry Louis Gates Jr. will again guide a new group to discover their ancestry. The series will draw on DNA analysis, genealogical research and family oral tradition to trace the lineages of the participants, including Maya Angelou, Morgan Freeman, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and Tina Turner, down through U.S. history and back to Africa. (Rating: TV-PG+VL)
  
  Faces of America - What made America? What makes us? These two questions are at the heart of this series. Using the latest tools of genealogy and genetics to explore the family histories of 11 renowned Americans. Looking to the wider immigrant experience, Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. unravels the American tapestry, following the threads of his guests' lives back to their origins around the globe. (Rating: TV-PG) (Descriptive Video for the Visually Impaired)
  
  
• Finding Your Roots
  The basic drive to discover who we are and where we come from is at the core of the new 10-part PBS series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the 12th series from Professor Gates. Continuing on the quest begun in his previous projects, African American Lives, African American Lives 2 and Faces of America, Gates finds new ways to, as he says, "get into the DNA of American culture."
  
  In each hour-long episode, he takes viewers along for the journey with one celebrity pair bound together by an intimate, sometimes hidden link, and treks through layers of ancestral history to uncover the secrets and surprises of their family trees.
  
  Gates' guest pairings include...
  - Award-winning husband-and-wife actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, who are revealed to be distant cousins;
  - New Orleans jazz masters and close friends Harry Connick, Jr. and Branford Marsalis, whose European immigrant ancestors made very different choices in the slave-era South;
  - Spiritual leaders Angela Buchdahl, Yasir Qadhi and Rick Warren, whose ancestors' paths to America were shaped by religious convictions; and
  - Education superstar Geoffrey Canada and media legend Barbara Walters, who both rediscover family histories long obscured by forgotten name changes.
  
  Gates shares the findings with each guest and travels with them as they process what they've learned. He accompanies musician John Legend to a rock concert, goes backstage on Broadway with Samuel L. Jackson, joins Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker as he reveals the root-seeking results to his parents, and trails Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Geoffrey Canada to memorable family reunions.
  
  The series searches through several branches of the American past, leaving audiences all the more curious about their own background and eager to unearth their own family roots.
  
  This DVD features subtitles in English (SDH)