I've been a big fan of historical documentaries for over 25 years. The History Channel, in particular, is a favorite place to find these. The President's Book of Secrets fell right in line with that. It is a very good special about some of the most inner workings of government in areas such as national security at the cyber level.
The main focus, of course, is what the President knows, that we don't. Despite my familiarity with all these history shows, and a long time passion of staying current with global news, this special still had some information that I was not aware of. The show has comments by many government insiders and knowledgeable media people (Dan Rather, for instance), and their perspective is always of interest to me.
My one complaint is that they felt the need to inject fake "drama" into the show. Going in, I knew that we were not going to find out if there was a "book of secrets", but they saw the need to keep coming back to the dour narrator saying "...or perhaps it's in the President's Book of Secrets". I just hate this 21st century need to inject phony drama into simply EVERY show on TV. Some entire networks are dedicated to this. The TLC channel used to actually be about learning things. After all, the TLC used to stand for The Learning Channel. Now, TLC is just a compilation of human freak shows. The whole network is unwatchable.
The History Channel was the last to fall into this trap, but now they have unwatchable shows too, like "Hicks With Axes Cussing At Each Other", and "Idiots Crawling Through Junk Piles". These things are neither historic, nor educational. It's a sad state of affairs. And even though some informative shows, like The President's Book of Secrets, still show up on the History Channel, artificial "drama" makes its ugly presence known there too. So now, there is not a single channel on basic cable dedicated to education, and the dumbing down of America continues.
Overall, a very informative show about secrets and Presidents.
The main focus, of course, is what the President knows, that we don't. Despite my familiarity with all these history shows, and a long time passion of staying current with global news, this special still had some information that I was not aware of. The show has comments by many government insiders and knowledgeable media people (Dan Rather, for instance), and their perspective is always of interest to me.
My one complaint is that they felt the need to inject fake "drama" into the show. Going in, I knew that we were not going to find out if there was a "book of secrets", but they saw the need to keep coming back to the dour narrator saying "...or perhaps it's in the President's Book of Secrets". I just hate this 21st century need to inject phony drama into simply EVERY show on TV. Some entire networks are dedicated to this. The TLC channel used to actually be about learning things. After all, the TLC used to stand for The Learning Channel. Now, TLC is just a compilation of human freak shows. The whole network is unwatchable.
The History Channel was the last to fall into this trap, but now they have unwatchable shows too, like "Hicks With Axes Cussing At Each Other", and "Idiots Crawling Through Junk Piles". These things are neither historic, nor educational. It's a sad state of affairs. And even though some informative shows, like The President's Book of Secrets, still show up on the History Channel, artificial "drama" makes its ugly presence known there too. So now, there is not a single channel on basic cable dedicated to education, and the dumbing down of America continues.
Overall, a very informative show about secrets and Presidents.