| Title | : | A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0805076034 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780805076035 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 445 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2008 |
An irresistible blend of history, myth, and misadventure, A Voyage Long and Strange captures the wonder and drama of first contact. Vikings, conquistadors, French voyageurs — these and many others roamed an unknown continent in quest of grapes, gold, converts, even a cure for syphilis. Though most failed, their remarkable exploits left an enduring mark on the land and people encountered by late-arriving English settlers.
Tracing this legacy with his own epic trek — from Florida's Fountain of Youth to Plymouth's sacred Rock, from desert pueblos to subarctic sweat lodges, Tony Horwitz explores the revealing gap between what we enshrine and what we forget. Displaying his trademark talent for humor, narrative, and historical insight, A Voyage Long and Strange allows us to rediscover the New World for ourselves.
A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World Reviews
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Mr. Horwitz's past work has a wonderful knack for combining travel, history, and current culture into a satisfying blend that leaves the reader interested and informed. "A Voyage Long and Strange" is not as good as his past efforts, but it is a delightful and informative read none the less.
I guess my education was not as bad as the ones lamented by Horwitz in this text because I had a passing familiarity with most of the explorers, conquistadors, etc. that he mentioned. Still, Horwitz developed those stories on a human level, and I enjoyed his exploration of how those long ago expeditions and voyages shape this nation to this very day.
A strength of the book is that Horwitz gives credit where credit is due, and does not paint all the conquistadors and explorers as men who raped and pillaged exclusively. He gives them as fair a shake as can be expected in our sensitive modern world, while not glossing over their cruelties and flaws. The people in the past were like us, good and bad mixed together, and Horwitz seems to keep away from the postmodern tenet of judging people by our time and standards.
Another great strength of the text is his interviews and adventures with the modern inhabitants of the places that were the quest of the explorers he examines.
Love them or hate them, names like Columbus, DeSoto, DeVaca, Coronado, Smith, etc. are names that anyone who wants a real understanding of America's history should be familiar with. This text is a good place to go exploring. You will be entertained and informed. -
First, I'd really rate this a 3.5 star book, and perhaps even a four-star. I admit a bias about Tony Horwitz's writing, which perhaps reflects more on my unrealistic expectations of a travel writer than on Tony Horwitz, or perhaps a rush to judgment on my part. The jury is still out, and I will work my way through Horwitz's oeuvre to reach a more nuanced conclusion. Let me say, for now, that based on my previous reading of Horwitz (Confederates in the Attic), I found his writing style bland and felt he lacked the "zing" of Sarah Vowel, another historical/travel writer, or the curmudgeonly wit of a Paul Theroux. In 'A Voyage Long and Strange,' Horwitz uses the pretext of his realization that he doesn't know much about the various explorers who ventured to the Americas, especially those before the landing of the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock in 1620. To rectify the holes in his knowledge, Horwitz sets out on various travel expeditions, ranging from Newfoundland to trace the settlements of the Vikings in the 11th Century, onto Coronado's ill-fated journey from Mexico to Kansas in search of ancient lost cities. He also travels to Florida to learn more about the expedition of the restless Hernando DeSoto and makes a stop in Jacksonville in an attempt to research the 1562 settlement there of the French Hugenots. He moves on to North Carolina and gives an interesting account of Sir Walter Raleigh and visits Roanoke Island where in the summer of 1587 a group of British were left to establish a colony and managed to disappear by 1590, one of history's many mysteries as to what exactly happened to the 115 colonists whose relief aid had been delayed by Britain's naval battles with the Spanish in 1588. Horwitz proceeds north to Jamestown, Virginia, home of another famous settlement. This segment has a lot of juicy information about rascally John Smith, the equally knavish Powhatan, and the Pocahontas "legend," Horwitz ends his trip at Plymouth Rock, which, he notes, is much smaller than most Americans realize.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymout...
Horwitz's quest for discovery seems to have made him wiser, but more jaded. He notes:
"I saw Plymouth through jaundiced eyes, not as the cornerstone of early America, but as its capstone, piled on a cairn erected by all those who came before."
I enjoyed this book and it contained a lot of fascinating tidbits about US history and gave me the urge to learn more. My verdict on Horwitz as a scintillating travel writer is still out, but 'A Voyage Long and Strange' shows Horwitz as a research skilled at digging up those fascinating tidbits of history that, for me at least, make for an interesting book. This will not be my last review of Mr. Horwitz. -
Tony Horwitz makes a rather startling confession in his introduction to "A Voyage Long and Strange." After viewing the famous rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts, he writes:
“I scanned the data stored in my own brain about America’s family of Europeans. ‘In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue’…John Smith and Jamestown…the Mayflower Compact…Pilgrims in funny hats…Of the Indians who met the English, I of course knew Pocahontas, Squanto, and … Hiawatha?
“…As far as dates, I’d mislaid an entire century, the one separating Columbus’s sail in 1492 from Jamestown’s founding in 16-0-something. Maybe nothing happened in the period between. Still, it was disturbing not to know. Expensively educated at a private school and university --- [now an even more shocking admission!] – a history major, no less! I’d matriculated to middle age with a third grader’s grasp of early America.”
But it gets worse. Horwitz later writes: “…like most Americans, I was ignorant of the Jamestown story, even though I’d spent much of my life in Virginia.” [!!??]
His confession reminds me of a story the late Lewis Grizzard used to tell, which ended with the punch line, “Damn brother, I don’t believe I woulda told that.”
But Horwitz sets out to fill in the void in his knowledge of early American history and he succeeds admirably. He may have been a poor historian, but he is an outstanding journalist who has traveled the world and been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his work, strange though it may be that he would be so curious about what was happening around the globe, but not be intellectually engaged with what had happened in his own backyard.
His book is really a pretense for travel. After extensive research, he writes about that century that he knows nothing about, and then he melds the past and the present by traveling to the areas where the significant events occurred and writes about what he finds there today. So, even if, unlike Horwitz, the reader is familiar with the people and events of that era, the current information will still be worthwhile.
Finally, Horwitz entertains the reader with his wit and charm and at the same time provides an opportunity to learn American history in a painless fashion. And after those confessions in his introduction and what he has done about them, I’m sure he now feels better about himself. I would. -
This was an impulse buy. I was at the Smithsonian, the Native American, American Indian, museum, and this was in the bookstore. And since I get like 20% off because I’m a supporter and the cover was interesting, and the start sounded good.
And I had a really nice lunch.
So I figured what the hell.
And it was one of those times where it worked out. Go figure.
Horowitz travels to discover the discovery of America (at least discovery by white folks, but he’s honest about that part of it). Some of what he covers, a reader of history will now, but his writing makes up for the lapses. Part travelogue, the book also covers people’s reactions to history or to a changing view of history.
While the focus is largely on the land that makes the US, other parts of the Americas do get the spotlight shown on them. Additionally, the book is not simply the repeating of facts, but also a study of how facts and myths switch places.
It’s quite a fun read and you will learn quite a bit. -
I found this book to be very enjoyable. I read this book as extra credit for one of my classes but liked it nonetheless. I really love learning about history but some academic history books can be very dry and boring to read so I like history books like this where it was written for a broad audience. There was a lot of stuff in this book I didn't know but also lots and lots of facts that I did know. This is probably partially because I'm in an American history class right now but some things that the author discovered where he was like "this is so cool I had no idea this happened!" I already knew about it and it was less exciting. I would say definitely pick up this book if you are interested in learning more about who the earliest settlers of America were, where the went, what they did, and how they affected the native peoples. Very informative and I pretty interesting read.
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Like many Americans, I was raised on the traditional stories of the Pilgrims and other myths about our nations’ origins. Horwitz evidently received the same sort of education, and after an unintended visit to Plymouth Rock, he was inspired to fill in the gaps in his knowledge. Accordingly, he set off on a journey across North America, venturing to Canada, the Caribbean, and most regions of the United States.
Horwitz relates to the reader the stories of the various European expeditions to the New World, starting with the Vikings’ explorations in the north and ending with the English settlements in New England. What makes this book unique is that Horwitz intersperses the historical narrative with tales of his own adventures across the continent. His findings range from interesting to depressing to boring, but what I enjoyed most was reading about the people he found who live at these historical locations. I was amazed at the effect these events from centuries ago play in these peoples’ lives. I think that insight is this book’s biggest strength. There are other books dedicated to the Conquistadors, the tragic demise of native peoples, and all the other stories that Horwitz covers, but none of them show how the history continues to hang over the heads of people across the continent.
I didn’t love Horwitz’ writing, but he aims to entertain and he does succeed at that with his casual style. As mentioned above, this isn’t serious history, but it’s a nice introduction to fill in the gaps of and correct the errors of elementary school education.
On a personal note, I’ve always been familiar with the names of Spanish and Portuguese Conquistadors and explorers because the street names in my neighborhood are rife with them: Cortez, Cabrillo, Drake, Bernal, Coronado, Diaz, de Soto – just to name a few. I knew the stories of some, but I enjoyed learning about others, particularly Coronado and de Soto. Maybe enjoyed isn’t the right word, since they killed thousands of people, but enlightening, nonetheless. -
A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World gets 4 Stars, not for being enjoyable but for being a good read. Horwitz is on a mission to destroy founding myths and rub your nose in the sometimes cruel facts. He succeeds. The focus of the book is from Columbus to the 1620 landing of the Pilgrims. Much of the book is therefore about the Spanish, some French, a couple Portuguese and then the English at the end of the story.
When someone bemoans the terrible impact of the “Europeans” on Native Americans, I’m pretty sure the image is meant to call up the white man. However, the author spends the first 2/3rds of the book primarily on the Spanish impact. Living in New Mexico, it is instructive to learn about what happened here, representative of so many other colonies established by Spain. Coronado traveled just north of my home and left an impression:
That Coronado, what a guy! He did have a certain way with the natives:
Toward the end of the 16th Century, another conquistador, Juan de Oñate left his mark on the area. Acoma is just a short distance west from me and I will never overfly it again without remembering the story of what happened there:
De Soto was another explorer/conquistador/adventurer with a drive to find his fortune. Horwitz reveals these and other people who landed in America as both ruthless and cruel while also admiring their drive and toughness.
The final third of the book brings the English into the picture. England had an early peek into the New World but was not in a position to make an effort to colonize.
England also had a long record of futility when it came to exploring the New World. In 1496, four years after Columbus’s first sail, another Italian navigator, John Cabot, won a license from King Henry VII to “seeke out, discover and finde” new lands. Cabot reached Newfoundland the next year but barely ventured ashore, discovering only some animal dung and a fishing snare. He gave the snare to King Henry, who dispatched Cabot on a second voyage to America. The mariner never returned. “He is believed to have found the new lands nowhere but on the very bottom of the ocean,” a contemporary observed.
By the start of the 17th Century, England begins to stake a claim to new colonies in present day North Carolina and Virginia.
In 1602, a party of English built a fort on the island of Cuttyhunk. They came, not for religious freedom, but to get rich from digging sassafras, a commodity prized in Europe as a cure for the clap.
The Pilgrims who arrived in Massachusetts eighteen years later had a very different experience. Samoset, the first Indian they met at Plymouth, greeted the settlers in English. The first thing he asked for was beer.
Worth the time to read, full of interesting facts but not exactly pleasant. -
This book has some bright spots, but is terribly difficult to get through in others. He's rambling about local joints and what he's doing and absurd conversations when I want to know about the dealings of Columbus, Coronado, De Soto, Cortez and others. Oh, and leave your bullshit liberal tendencies at home or wherever it is that dumbasses follow that drivel of thought. I almost quit the book at "Gluttony and guilt: constant bedfellows in the Bible Belt South". Completely unnecessary.
He talks vaguely about Cortez (probably the biggest Conquistador) and his conquest of Mexico and the Mexica (Aztecs). He belittles this to one paragraph and basically says "he slaughtered them". Anyone that's read the accounts - I recommend Hugh Thomas'
Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes and the Fall of Old Mexico account - knows it was much more complex than this. Instead we are left to wonder while he tells of accounts of his plodding through Cuba and New Mexico / Texas and Kansas and his lame interactions with the locals. He also likes to belittle them and speaks condescending to them "But is this a Viking convention or something?". Skip this one and move on to something substantive where personal judgments aren't made.
He spends way too much time belittling Columbus and speaking of his failures instead of giving the actual history of what happened. The third voyage of him (the most famous) is barely presented and you'd never know the routes that Columbus found to the new world were basically mimic by every ship from Europe to America for the next 300 years. You'd never know this because he's too busy telling you about stupid local customs of a land where the inhabitants have neglected it and left it to ruin except for tourism purposes. Garbage really. No mention of Bobadilla at all. None. It's obvious the author has a problem with Columbus and fails to mention or give credit to his accomplishments to history. Without him, none of us are here. If you want to read about Columbus I suggest
Columbus: The Four Voyages.
A little over half-way through the book and I'm seriously contemplating moving on to a better issue of exploration and conquest. I will definitely pick up other accounts of Coronado, De Soto and De Leon. With what I know is missing from Columbus and Cortez, I can only suspect the other accounts are missing significant details as well. Pass this one up. Disappointed to say the least.
I did finish the book. Wouldn't recommend it to be honest. The end was just trash because he promotes subscribing to the myth rather than the fact because it's "nicer" to paraphrase. Dive into the actual history and study what happened. Skip this garbage. -
Every school kid is taught that Columbus "discovered" America in 1492 and that the Pilgrims stepped onto a rock in 1620, but what happened in between? To shed light on the American "Dark Ages," Tony Horwitz follows the trails, literally by car, blazed by the Vikings, Spanish, French and English explorers and exploiters. He is a very entertaining writer with a touch of sarcasm that is used to debunk the myths we were taught in school.
I liked how he hit the road and dug up folks along the sixteenth century explorers' routes to add a human touch to what has always been just the rote history of our youth. He particularly went out of his way, often way out, to connect with those people who could tell the story of those who were exploited, dispossessed and just plain murdered by direct and indirect means.
I am puzzled, however, that he made absolutely no mention of the Dutch who settled New Amsterdam six years before the Mayflower unloaded its stiff collared cargo. A glaring omission in my mind of an otherwise thoroughly researched and entertaining history.
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I couldn't resist this book after traversing Tony Horwitz' wonderful opus,
Confederates in the Attic. Told in much the same way, i.e., interspersing dollops of grim and sometimes ridiculous historical events with interviews of current residents of the historical venues. Sometimes the current goings on are at least as crazy as the historical ones. But Horwitz' easy manner and ability to paint the historical picture with a jaundiced (if non-judgemental) eye serves the story well. Certainly the reader will have no illusions about the clay feet of the various historical figures as well as those today who try to mold the truth to fit their own agenda. A worthwhile read. -
Tony Horwtiz's style really appeals to me - I like his "gung ho" approach of reporting. It totally worked in Confederates in the Attic and in Blue Latitudes.
I heard about this book before its release in 2007. I was visiting the Jamestown settlement in Virginia and overheard a conversation about how Horwitz had been there doing some research for his new book. I knew he was living in Virginia at the time, so it didn't come as a big surprise, and the timing was right, since Jamestown celebrated its 400th anniverary in 2007.
When this book hit the market, I immediately added it to the queue and picked it up at the bookstore a few weeks later.
The premise of the book is a little jab at the American education system - the misinformation and the general laziness of historical education at the primary and secondary levels. Of course the educators alone are not at fault, but a general public who believe that Columbus landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, or that the pilgrims were at Jamestown. Dates and geography forgotten so easily... and Horwitz wants to fill in those gaps.
He sets out on this quest first by researching the *many* explorations through North America and the Caribbean by the host of imperial European powers. He starts with Columbus, and travels to the Dominican Republic and searches for signs of the explorer in the modern day country. This is his modus operandi for the book: go to the modern country/region/state, and look for signs of the past. He relies on several archival resources, but he really just likes to talk to people. So, he goes into museums, into bars, into public parks, and just talks to people. It's a kind of guerilla approach, but he shares some interesting anecdotes and meets many unique characters.
There were a few dry spells in the book, and I freely admit to skipping over some portions and starting on the next chapter/region. The chapters on the Southwest took me back to my New Mexico history class in middle school - we did learn many of the same things, so it was good to revisit. My favorite chapters in the book were the stories of the explorations in the southeast by the Spanish and the French - perhaps it is because I knew the least about that region's history, or because the stories were so enticing.
Horwitz does not cover completely unexplored territory here (to keep with the theme!) but he does it in a fun and readable way. The general idea is similar to Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me. One criticism that I had while reading this book - and I understand that we just don't have the documentation to truly "back up" the other party's experience - it all seemed so Euro-centric. I couldn't help but think that the book needed a little dose of Zinn's People's History... added to the mix for more palpability.
That being said, I enjoyed it and learned some great little tidbits. While reading, I felt the need to share said tidbits with family and friends :) -
I was fascinated by this look at the settlers of our continent who are ignored in most history books. We visited Jamestown recently and I wish I’d known more information about the settlement.
As always, I really enjoyed Horwitz’s writing. -
I came to this book full of expectations and intrigue, after Horwitz's phenomenal pop-historical jaunt through the weirdness of neo-Confederate headlines and Dixie locales in "Confederates in the Attic." The subject of public memory, as its predecessor, is also a topic near and dear to my heart. Reared on James Louwen's "Lies My Teacher Told Me", I was ready to embark full-hearted on a cross-country romp through the misstated facts of American civil mythology. Closing the book for the last time, I felt dissatisfied.
Horwitz has an affable, casual nature to his writing style that eliminates from academic scrutiny. It's clearly not intended for that forum. All of his books are casual reads in the mode of Bill Bryson. Do not be fooled; he does his earnest research and aims to enlighten the reader while unraveling an entertaining tale.
Much of what prevents "A Voyage" from becoming the poignant analysis that "Confederates" was is not so much the author but the subject. "Confederates" was such an intriguing read precisely because the Civil War is a uniquely Southern experience which is lived out through current events and the 10 o'clock news nearly a century and a half after its conclusion. For many, that war still remains a primary aspect of American identity, whether African-American, Southern, or the rare Yankee Union-enthusiast. Each chapter provided a snapshot of how the War still lives on. It's far more likely to come across a disillusioned Daughter of the Confederacy than it is a Powhatan Indian these days. Horwitz excels at blending the history with the memory of his contemporaries. In this subject, he clearly has much less with which to work.
In "Voyage", I felt like a conscripted Spanish soldier on a forced march through the stories. Horwitz writes each Spanish trek with as much enthusiasm. In the end, the histories and story-telling lose the vitality that Horwitz had captured in his previous work. The topic itself is one that numbs the reader. Whelp, the Spanish conquistador pillaged another indigenous village; more Indians died from an introduced disease; etc, etc. Horwitz's gavel -- his firm conclusion -- only comes in the closing paragraphs, all the pages beforehand equated to the wasteland that Estevanico faced (actually, very cool story which should be taught). Lost were the themes and imagery which he deftly wove into "Confederates."
Perhaps, it's unfair to compare "Voyage" with his earlier book. Rarely does it provide the insight that one can find in other works. In its own right though this is an enjoyable read that may give one a greater appreciation for pre-Mayflower history on the U.S. continent. -
Entertaining and knowledgeable.
For a further review:
http://susannag.booklikes.com/post/45... . -
While a tourist at Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz realized that, for him, the years between Columbus' landing in 1492 and the Pilgrim's Mayflower voyage in 1620 were a complete void. He decides to embark on a journey back in time, exploring sites in the Americas pertinent to European colonization before 1620. In his travels, he explores the Dominican Republic, where Columbus landed in 1492, retraces the path of Hernando de Soto through what is now the southeastern US, and visits sites in the Southwest that Cabeza de Vaca explored. He spends time in St. Augustine, FL, site of the first permanent European settlement within the boundaries of the US, tours Roanoke Island, NC, site of the Lost Colony, and explores the archaeological site at Jamestown, VA. The book is mostly a travelogue interspersed with history about the places he visits. It's a fun way to learn about these sites if you want a break from a more scholarly read.
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This was a long voyage alright. Took me well over a year, if I am being honest. This would have made a great serial in a magazine, one chapter published each month or quarter. That’s just how I read it - one chapter at a time, pausing (sometimes for months) to pick up other things. But it was a worthy read and I was reminded (in much greater detail than I probably ever knew) of pre-Pilgrim American discovery. Perhaps Horowitz assumed we as reader knew enough about the story of the Pilgrims to gloss over or not even mention much of their saga (treating it much differently than the saga of earlier exploration and settlement experiences), but I wish he had kept with his style and format on this story and wanted a bit more here. Otherwise, he writes a very accessible and engaging history.
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This is an almost perfect mix of history (and history that is virtually unknown to most Americans, I think, despite the importance of this period) and modern storytelling. Horwitz looks at most of the major voyages of exploration and colonization before the Pilgrims came to Mass. in 1620: the Vikings in Newfoundland around 1000 AD; Columbus; then the Spanish in FL and the SE and the SW US (including Coronado going all the way up to Kansas in 1542, and Cabeza de Vaca's bizarre journey from FL all the way down to Mexico); the French Hugeunots in FL; then wrapping up with Roanoke Island and Jamestown and back to the Pilgrims.
The people that Horwitz talked to in New Mexico, in Kansas, in Georgia and Virginia - and what they say about history, what they do to re-enact it, what they believe in spite of all evidence to the contrary - it's just fascinating. And the actual history is pretty amazing, too. Combine the two (with a bit of Horwitz's personality thrown in for good measure) and you get a great book.
This is a wonderful introduction to US colonial history (or ethnohistory, if you're interested in the Native side of things) - and it's one of the most readable history books I've read in years. The chapters break up easily into nice sections, so it isn't overwhelming. It's fun. Although I learned more details in my classes on this stuff, I don't think I snorted and laughed so much.
Nice index and further sources section, too. And his ending - on what history means to us as Americans - ah, just a delight to read. -
I picked up this book on the recommendation of the wonderful folks at Distant Lands travel store in Pasadena, and it was amazing. I was intrigued by the book's premise: the author, bemused by the omission of a century and a half of history from his middle school education, sought to fill in the gap from Columbus' arrival in 1492 to the establishment of the Plymouth colony.
Horowitz unearths a trove of incredible stories, which have been forgotten, ignored, or purposefully left out of the "official" history of our continent's colonization. I don't want to spoil it, but in the last chapter he comes to what I feel is a very valid conclusion - as unsettling as it is.
My favorite of the adventures he writes about is that of Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish explorer left for dead in one of the first attempts to land on Florida. What followed is an incredible 8 year journey along the gulf coast, surviving as a trader, slave, and healer of natives along the way. He eventually stumbled upon a group of Spanish slave raiders in northern Mexico, and was "rescued" - only to be sent to a remote post in Paraguay where he would soon die.
In each of these stories Horowitz provides just enough detail to amaze you - while also keeping a pleasantly rapid pace. He sprinkles hilarious anecdotes throughout, gleaned from his intrepid travels to retrace the steps of the explorers he writes about.
One of the best books I've read in a while, and highly recommended. -
Early America is weird. There are lots of lost people, lots of cannibalism, vanished expeditions, cities of gold, and a whole lot of maltreatment of natives. Horwitz's history-tourism stuff is always fun and entertaining, and he somehow manages to hook up with a good bunch of cranks and nutsos to track the story's ramifications to the present vividly. This probably works best in Confederates in the Attic, where he's tracking the resonances of the Civil War, and thus the story isn't even over yet (cue Faulkner quotation here). And his Captain Cook book carries its own burden of tragedy, since there's the contemporary tourist-trap aspect of the South Seas to play off and blame on what the first Europeans did to the place. This is third-best, I think, since some of the places he visits, particularly those where there are religious arguments about Protestant vs. Catholic inroads (the 16th century still isn't over) or natives vs. African-Americans v. Europeans (the 17th century still isn't over), pose questions that still matter. Some of them don't, really, though: the 10th century is over, so there's not a ton of cultural-conflict juice to wring out of Norsemen. His stints in a sweat lodge, and particularly in conquistador armor, are pretty funny, and I now know De Soto vs. Coronado, but this is not his best. -
After I read Tony Horwitz' previous book, Blue Latitudes, I loved it so much I read every Horwitz book I could get my hands on. Now, "A Voyage Long and Strange" is here, and it's one of his strongest books yet.
Horwitz is an author who writes in what I think of as a subgenre, the travel narrative combined with researched background information. (Bill Bryson is another author famous for this kind of writing). Here, Horwitz travels to locations in Canada, the US and Central America, and traces the routes of the early explorers. His thesis is that most Americans have forgotten the historical period between Columbus and Plymouth Rock. In my case, I thought this was not strictly true, and I was pretty certain I wasn't going to learn much in this book. I was wrong indeed.
Horwitz traces the routes of various conquistadors and other explorers, and along the way he tells us their forgotten history and talks with contemporary folks he meets along the way. The journey is always interesting, and the history nearly always fascinating. Horwitz makes for a great armchair travel companion, and this is a great book for anyone interested in travel and early American history. -
An entertaining survey of the European explorers of the Americas between Christopher Colombus and Plymouth Plantation. Entertainingly written, generally horrific in the details. This book would scare the pants off people worried about religions and cultures that foster violence and religious war. The Christian Europeans were generally unspeakably, unforgivably terrible. In league with anything I've read about ISIS, Nazis, Mongols, Japanese. Anyone. Among the absolute worst. Their greed stripped them of any human decency. This is what we need to study: how did a culture that sick and twisted slowly change to value diversity and human life? Happily, the book doesn't dwell only on the terrible things and has lots of interesting current day asides - implications of how we tell the story, who has statues commemorating them, tribes with surviving descendants and what their cultures are like.
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What happened in what is now the United States between 1492, when Columbus "discovered" America and 1620, when the "first" settlers came to America on the Mayflower?
Most Americans would be very unlikely to be able to give any kind of adequate answer to that question. Neither could the author of this book, Tony Horwitz, before he decided to research it himself.
The book is very easy to read and focuses only on some of the most intriguing and important events that took place during that time. More than half the book details the experiences Horwitz himself had while traveling and researching for this book which is overall very entertaining and enlightening. -
In a trip to Massachusetts, Tony Horwitz visited Plymouth Rock and realized that there was a huge gap in his understanding of American history--the period between Columbus's 1492 voyage to the New World and the founding of Jamestown in 1607. In an effort to fill in this period, he began studying early Viking, French, and Spanish exploration and colonization efforts in North America and visiting many of the actual locations involved. The result is an entertaining mix of the policies and personalities of early Europeans interacting in North America and a travelogue of his adventures following their historical trails.
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Gave up about 1/3 through the book. Billed as the history of the discovery of the new world, the book was actually almost entirely about the experiences of the author in traveling around to research the history of the new world. I found zero interest in the experiences of the author.
Further, a lot of the "history" the author recounts is obviously just folk tales about the history that he came across in his travels. Again, of no real scholarly interest.
If I had thought to check I would have learned the author is a journalist, not a historian, and saved myself a lot of wasted reading of baloney. -
This book needs a more manageable title. I never can remember it and if you read it, I suspect you'll have the same experience.
This is a travel/history book. The author visits historical locations of events that occurred between the first landing of Columbus and the settlement of Jamestown. Believe it or not, this was one of the richest periods in American history.
Horwitz tells those stories and of his travels with verve.
Now I just need of a way to remember this fine book's title. -
This was a really interesting book both historically and as a look at culture from 1400-1700 in America and abroad. I realised I am so clueless when it comes to the founding of our nation. The author handled this topic in a nice way, without romanticsing the facts and yet still keeping a human appeal. Dragged towards the end,but very enjoyable.
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Nicely done. Horwitz isn't for everyone; he likes to combine pop history with his own travelogues, which turns some people off. But he's easy to read, and (from what I can gather) he gets his facts straight. For folks like me who need an easy introduction to one phase of history or another, he's pretty useful.
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March pick for non-fiction! This was supposed to be a break from military history and war leaders that I’ve been picking up to read. And… it was. At one level. At another it was probably entirely infinitely more fucking depressing than the exploits of the Mongols and Crusaders.
This was good and very educating, because the author set out to educate himself on the exact same period of history I’ve been looking to learn more about too – that early “Age of Discovery”. A rather narrower view, looking only at discoveries of the land that now makes up the U.S. (and West Indies, but we’ll get to that), but that’s to a purpose. The author set out to fill a hole in the gaps of the popular narrative in America of the continent’s “discovery” – that Columbus landed in ‘America’ in 1492, and then the Mayflower landed in Plymouth in 1622, and from there America was born – and Jamestown had Pocahontas somewhere in there. So Horwitz charts this history of the “rediscovery” of the U.S., Columbus included because, face it, we’re never ever going to be able to downplay the significance of that for the entire globe, and because it’s so very present in the creation myth of the United States, even though he never bloody went there lol.
So, it was a very entertaining and educating book, looking at the Spanish, the English, back to the Vikings – I came out learning exactly what I wanted to, and then some. The histories are colloquially written, using a great number of primary texts and archaeological investigation to chart the paths of these, uh, valiant explorers. These histories are interspersed with Horwitz’s travelogues charting these paths, revisiting these sites and journeys in the modern day (well, a decade ago).
At first I thought these would be kind of tired off-beat quirky stories, but they were kind of brilliant. They go to show the exact consequences of these Europeans setting foot in these places. And in doing so - always, how could it not -the focus would be turned back to the systemic racism put into place in each of these places, and the lives of Native Americans, 500 years on.
See, I learned about the history of Native Americans in year 10 (in an Australian high school, so...), I’ve done further reading and had interactions with Wampanoag people that were immensely eye-opening, but still really limited. I know about the atrocities – the systemic destruction of entire peoples over the centuries. I knew about how disease is probably by far the biggest factor in the mass death that swept through these communities, and I’ve heard about what has survived in these communities, and what has since died as a result of policies put into place by the ensuing governments put into place after colonization.
But something about the immediate and casual destruction of these people, in the century between discovery and settlement, absolutely floored me.
Like, Hernando De Soto arrived in Florida in 1537, wandered around the South with an army for four years. By the time English settlers established Jamestown in 1607, the civilisations that De Soto encountered were gone. Because of the diseases the Spanish introduced, people died immediately upon contact with his army. Because of what a brutal motherfucker he was, tribes and nations died in skirmishes and conflicts. The entire culture of the Mississippi disappeared.
It wasn’t a slow, long drawn out process like I thought all the genocide of Native Americans were – native populations being pushed back and back and back further West, many dying of disease and poverty along the way. Within less than a century, entire civilisations were gone, because of brief encounters with one Spanish army. It’s a scale, a type of destruction and genocide that I hadn’t conceived of before. It’s a really fucking heavy thought.
And that’s just one group of cultures and tribes that the book describes as having vanished. The story of how the Taino of modern day Dominican Republic died within generations of coming into contact with Columbus; the story of the Beothuk in Newfoundland, who may have been the descendants of those the Vikings fought in their brief colonization of Vinland, was told early on, charting the life of the last living member of the nation in the 1800s. There were so many more mentioned, and I’m sure so many more I’ll never hear about. I appreciated that a book on this subject took ample time to illustrate this for readers.
But on a lighter note, there was one moment that Horwitz illustrated for us – when the Icelandic Bjarni Herjolfsson accidentally discovers North America, and encounters an indigenous man. Horwitz frames this moment as the first time a European and American had encountered each other, ever, but also the first time these two branches of humanity had been reunited for tens of thousands of years.
And that kind of floored me too, in a bittersweet kind of way. How incredible the journey of humanity’s migration across the globe was – and what a goddamn shame that this encounter, in around 1000 AD, was only the precursor to such inconceivable misery.
(it also triggered my History Dissonance, wherein sometimes I can’t get my head around the fact that some things just… existed at the same time. Like the fact that Christopher Columbus started his voyage shortly after the War of the Roses ended, so Henry VII had to make policies on English expansion in the Americas. That blows my mind for some reason. Like, I’m educated enough in early modern European history to know the exact chain of events and context that lead to these two things happening at the same time, iit makes sense, but somewhere in my little pea brain I hear Christopher Columbus and Henry VII and can’t comprehend that they’d be contemporaries. Maybe I need to blame the nature of history education, especially in high school, that teaches us events and eras in isolated little bubbles, so now all my comprehension of history is parsed through this understanding. I don’t have trouble with this with history starting in the late 1800s, but maybe that’s because of the rapid globalizing technology being developed in that period. I don’t know! But even take me 80 years earlier and I’m going ‘fuck off, New South Wales existed during the Napoleonic wars????’)
