Thursday, October 04, 2007   Those who don't learn from
history...  By Edward Copeland While The War, the latest epic
documentary by Ken Burns (along with his co-director and co-
producer Lynn Novick and writer Geoffrey C. Ward) has garnered
mostly (and deservedly) rhapsodic reviews, I noticed a recurring
theme in much of the criticism. Many writers keep pointing out
how much of the material in his look back at America's
involvement in World War II has been covered before, both in
fiction and nonfiction forms. That is true, but a lot of The War
is fresh and, more importantly, informative. While I'm no WWII
expert, I do know a lot of what happened through various
sources, yet I still learned a lot from this seven-part, nearly
16 hours-long work. What's tragic is that the people who
probably most need to see it probably never will and while The
War reminded me of things I knew (or had forgotten) and informed
me of things I didn't, most often I kept thinking about how many
Americans are ignorant of the facts abou