War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its

size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. host, James Early. Hello and welcome to Key Battles of American History.

This is your host, James Early, as always.

And I am joined by my often co-host and my good buddy, Sean McIver.

Sean and I are super excited. We are going to be kicking off a 10-part series of in-depth discussions of the epic award-winning

2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. And we're going to tonight give you a brief introduction

to the series as a whole and then we're going to break down episode a brief introduction to the series as a whole, and then we're

going to break down episode one for you. So this will be similar to our movie reviews, but one

thing we will not be doing is giving our reviews at the end of each episode, because it's going to be

five stars for both of us for every single one. I'll just go ahead and tell you right off the bat.

Sean and I adore this series.

I've seen most of the episodes probably five or six times,

and Sean's probably seen them 50 times at least.

No, I would say roughly 423 times.

423. That's a very precise number.

Have you been counting? I mean, I watch it at least

two, maybe three times a year. I pretty much watch it every single, I pretty much watch it every

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