The early reviews are in for â??The Men Who Built Americaâ? and they are mixed. The New York Daily News describes the History Channelâ??s new eight-hour miniseries as â??standing as tall as Rockefeller Centerâ? in â??outlining the way Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan and Henry Ford literally shaped the America in which we liveâ?.
The New York Times headline describes the â??slickly madeâ? series as â??Then as Now, Business Bent on Power.â? Itâ??s an â??unflattering portrait of these men, one that suggests that they didnâ??t care about people who depended on them for jobs, or about what their posturing and stock market fiddling were doing to the overall economy.â? (It boomed during this period, didnâ??t it?)
Newsday notes that the series is a â??bit too comfortable with the Great Man theory of history â?? that a few great men built the modern world â?? while tending to overlook the mass of other men and women who helped build it as well.â? Their headline describes the series as a â??History dud.â?
Variety is unimpressed, noting that the show â??fails to leave its markâ? and that the â??docudrama series' ostentatious style begins to grate within the first 30 minutes.â?
What all the reviews fail to note, however, is the series' questionable account of history.
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