Our 2012 season is announced with a special video from Executive Producer Mark Samels. We hope you enjoy our upcoming season, which kicks off with our "Wild West Collection" on your local PBS station January 10 at 9/8C.

October 20, 1973: Nixon fired Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox in what becomes known as "The Saturday Night Massacre." The attorney general resigns and Congress files 21 resolutions calling for Nixon's impeachment.

Rosalynn Carter was a major figure in her husband's campaigns and policy meetings. "She wanted to be more than a fashion plate and somebody who gave teas," says historian E. Stanly Godbold.

On the White House lawn on August 5, 1990, H.W. Bush took a stand against Iraqi aggression against Kuwait. "He led with his gut, with his instincts," says biographer Timothy Naftali.

President Roosevelt's inaugural address filled the American people with confidence in their new leader. "They hear coming through their loudspeakers this voice so filled with courage, with self confidence, with a sense of leadership," says historian William Leuchtenburg.

Franklin Roosevelt used the power of the federal government to relieve the suffering caused by the Great Depression.

In 1992, President HW Bush seemed increasingly out of touch. His critics panned actions such as spending $28 on presents for his grandchildren and not understanding the technology of a grocery store checkout counter.

Protests against the Vietnam War turned personal, with students blaming LBJ for the way the war was going. "He was frustrated because he couldn't end it and because he thought he couldn't win it," says John Connally.

President Truman interpreted the North Korean attack upon South Korea as direct aggression from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's support for the invasion, however, was limited and not driven by the Soviet leader Stalin. "What the United States got involved with in 1950 was not aggression from the Soviet Union," says historian Walter LaFeber, but "an incredibly bloody Civil War in Korea."

Eleanor Roosevelt traveled more than 40,000 miles during FDR's first year as president. "Never before had a first lady taken to the road," says biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin. "She became his legs," says journalist Chalmers Roberts.

HW Bush acted to initiate a war in Iraq instead of imposing economic sanctions, drawing criticism from the American people and members of Congress.

President Carter's attempt at resolving the dispute between Israel and Egypt almost ended in failure. Egyptian President Sadat threatened to leave the talks at Camp David, but Carter used a personal approach to keep the talks going between Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Begin. The Camp David Accords would become Carter's greatest foreign policy achievement.

Carter asked the American people to cut down their energy usage during a fireside chat on February 2, 1977. "All of us must learn to waste less energy," Carter said.

When a new wave of striking unions shut down industries, Truman threatened to draft strikers into the army. "It was as high-handed, as unconstitutional, a measure as imaginable," says biographer David McCullough. "But he meant it."

President Nixon kept an "enemies list" of those who criticized him. He had these enemies targeted for tax audits or trailed by private detectives, and hired the "plumbers" to stop leaks.

Johnson had proposed to Claudia Alta Taylor the day they met. Lady Bird became the "perfect political wife" for LBJ.

George H.W. Bush was changed forever by his time as a combat pilot in World War II. "He had been taught not to show his emotions," says biographer Timothy Naftali, "so the public saw a slightly awkward man, who didn't seem quite ready to share his true self with them."

The delegations of Communist leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Reagan met in Geneva in 1985. "The President, from the very start, started to speak in a kind of lecturing tone, as though I was a suspect, or maybe a student," says Gorbachev.

In 1981, Reagan aided the Polish workers movement and in Afghanistan backed factions fighting a Soviet invasion.

When the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Truman understood the repercussions. "This places a terrible responsibility upon myself and upon the War Department," he said.