Lewis and Clark--the names rise dimly from an elementary school textbook along with an illustration of two white men in a canoe. Explorers. The Northwest Passage. Something to do with Vasco da Gama?
It is one achievement of Ken Burns' that his latest documentary for PBS helps rescue two heroic figures from the limbo of sixth-grade history. (Undaunted Courage, the recent bestseller by Stephen Ambrose, had already begun their rehabilitation, and Ambrose appears in the film.) Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, which will be shown in two-hour segments on Nov. 4 and 5, smoothly relates the...