With the possible exception of "Deadwood," the most ambitious limited series to be aired by any network this year was the History Channel's "Ten Days that Unexpectedly Changed America." In 10 one-hour segments, many of the best documentary filmmakers in the United States focused on significant events that have not been as extensively explored on film as Pearl Harbor, 9/11 and the JFK assassination. The often personal and surprisingly original results are now collected in a three-disc box set (A&E).

The earliest subject covered, in James Moll's "Massacre at Mystic," is the tension that erupted between English Puritans who settled in the Connecticut Valley in the early 17th century and the native Pequot. Moll's film is a bookend to Marco Williams' "Freedom Summer," which re-examines the 1965 campaign to register black voters in the South.

Meanwhile, Michael Epstein employs a novel flip-book approach to revisit a famous battle in "Antietam."

The most interesting approach is attempted in "Shays' Rebellion: America's First Civil War," in which Japanese-style animation is used to illustrate the stand taken by Massachusetts farmer Daniel Shays in 1776, when he led a group of colonials to Boston to protest harsh taxation.

The two most illuminating episodes are Rory Kennedy's "The Homestead Strike," about the clash between striking Pennsylvania mill workers and the Pinkerton goons hired by Andrew Carnegie to protect his steel mills in 1892, and "Murder at the Fair: The Assassination of President McKinley," directed by Joe Berlinger. Bruce Sinofsky contributes "When America Was Rocked," analyzing the furor created by Elvis Presley's first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1956.

Other titles are "Scopes: The Battle for America's Soul," "Gold Rush" and "Einstein's Letter."