"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

Thomas Jefferson complains about haggling over the Declaration of Independence ... Jack London guides us through the rubble of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake ... Langston Hughes visits the Scottsboro Boys on death row ... Andy Warhol paints the scene at Studio 54 ... John Seabrook receives e-mail from Bill Gates. Three hundred eyewitnesses -- some famous, some anonymous -- give their personal accounts of the great moments that make up our past, from Columbus to cyberspace, and infuse them with a freshness and urgency no historian can duplicate. David Colbert has brought together a multitude of voices to create a singularly rich American narrative. Here are the vivid impressions of men and women who were witnesses to and participants in these and other dramatic moments: the first colony in Virginia, the Salem witch trials, the Boston Tea Party, the Oklahoma land rush, the Scopes Trial, the bombing of Nagasaki, the lunch-counter sit-ins at the outset of the civil rights movement, New York City's Stonewall Riot, the fall of Saigon, and the 1992 Los Angeles riots. With unparalleled and thrilling immediacy, these excerpts from diaries, private letters, memoirs, and newspapers paint a fascinating picture of the evolving drama of American life.

'In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.' But just where did Columbus land?

Under the editorship of the chairman of the National Museum of the American Indian, 15 prominent scholars present a richly detailed portrait of the civilizations that flourished in the Americas on the eve of Columbus's arrival. These essays explore societies ranging from the hunter-gatherers of the Arctic to the Inca empire. Photographs and maps.

In this provocative and timely collection of essays--five published for the first time--one of the most important ethnohistorians writing today, James Axtell, explores the key role of imagination both in our perception of strangers and in the writing of history. Coinciding with the 500th anniversary of Columbus's "discovery" of America, this collection covers a wide range of topics dealing with American history. Three essays view the invasion of North America from the perspective of the Indians, whose land it was. The very first meetings, he finds, were nearly always peaceful. Other essays describe native encounters with colonial traders--creating "the first consumer revolution"--and Jesuit missionaries in Canada and Mexico. Despite the tragedy of many of the encounters, Axtell also finds that there was much humor in Indian-European negotiations over peace, sex, and war. In the final section he conducts searching analyses of how college textbooks treat the initial century of American history, how America's human face changed from all brown in 1492 to predominantly white and black by 1792, and how we handled moral questions during the Quincentenary. He concludes with an extensive review of the Quincentenary scholarship--books, films, TV, and museum exhibits--and suggestions for how we can assimilate what we have learned.