High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Great Books is an hour-long documentary and biography program that aired on The Learning Channel. The series was a project co-created by Walter Cronkite and former child actor Jonathan Ward under a deal they had with their company Cronkite-Ward and the The Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel. Premiering on September 8, 1993, to coincide with International Literacy Day, the series took in-depth looks into some of literature`s greatest fictional and nonfictional novels and books and the authors who created them. The series is mostly narrated by Donald Sutherland.