Book excerpt: "Five hundred years after Columbus first made the world aware of a Western habitation between Europe and Asia, the global populace celebrates the discovery that certified the international framework. In this series of sonnets segmented by century, Rose Basile Green gives beat, rhyme, and metaphor to the facts, the people, and the actions that chronologically realized the idealism that developed the United States of America as the New World of equality, liberty, and justice for all." "With the celebration of the founding, integrating, and acclamation of places and events of this New World where people have pursued and achieved the reward of their efforts, Green reviews, personifies, and poeticizes the realization of the American Dream. With Five Hundred Years of America, 1492-1992, the poet creates a volume structured according to the sequential events within five centuries of the development and population of the nation." "Inspired by the affirmation asserted by Robert E. Spiller and Roy Nichols, professors and Americana sources at the University of Pennsylvania who formulated the outline of studies for Green, the scholar thus presents rhythmically the history of the United States that she has absorbed from the many historians she studied as she achieved her Doctor of Philosophy in American Civilization." "From the preface, which states that "Columbus broke the path to the New World/Across the sea in fourteen ninety-two," the poems proceed to include the people and the progress that historians have recognized as the distinguished growth of the U.S.A. for five hundred years. With the celebration of places and events where individuals have pursued their personal ambitions, the poet-historian particularizes, summarizes, and validates the leadership of the America of today." "Progressing from the global sights of Columbus, moving with an awareness of Natives, advancing the pursuit of immigrants seeking freedom from Old World tyranny, and heightening to the structure of a powerful democracy, America evolves in the poems as the model of humanity striving for the equality of opportunity, effort, achievement, success, and recognition." "The reader is invited, as the poet pronounces in her dedication, "to live your history, dear U.S.A., Accept this poetry just as one way." The volume then moves from The Real Discovery through the five centuries to the realization that, with Sempre America, one is able to Sail On And On to the universal chorale of the voyage with the Columbian Hymn. Green hopefully trusts that these poems will inspire all citizens wherever they are in the world to pursue the American Dream."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved