Video: The Presidents - John Q. Adams to Polk (1825 - 1849)

The office is one of the hallmarks of the American experiment, open to any native-born citizen over the age of 35. The men who have inhabited it have been heroes and villains, visionaries and scoundrels, towering figures and seeming afterthoughts.

This epic, eight-part series illuminates the legendary leaders and forgotten placeholders in a 215-year history of THE PRESIDENTS. Here is the story of Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase and Reagan's Revolution, of the Battle of the Petticoats and the machinations of Rutherford Hayes, the two presidential dynasties and the near-treasonous James Buchanon administration. Filled with visits to presidential archives and commentary from leading scholars, this is an ambitious, encyclopedic look at the leaders who have shaped our nation, for better and worse.