Books : A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 970.01
EAN: 9780805076035
ISBN: 0805076034
Label: Henry Holt and Co.
Manufacturer: Henry Holt and Co.
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Release Date: April 29, 2008
Sales Rank: 2321
Studio: Henry Holt and Co.
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Product Description:
The bestselling author of Blue Latitudes takes us on a thrilling and eye-opening voyage to pre-Mayflower America
On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz realizes he’s mislaid more than a century of American history, from Columbus’s sail in 1492 to Jamestown’s founding in 16-oh-something. Did nothing happen in between? Determined to find out, he embarks on a journey of rediscovery, following in the footsteps of the many Europeans who preceded the Pilgrims to America.
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.
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Rating:  -
I have been a long-time fan of Tony Horwitz, and always look forward to his historic-based, quirky and entertaining books. A Journey Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World follows his usual formula in traveling in the steps of history. In this case, he follows in the steps of America's early explorers.
While vacationing in New England, Horwitz visits Plymouth Rock (more like Plymouth Pebble, he laments). This former history major realized that what he didn't know about American's early explorers was a "chasm." He discovers that he "mislaid an entire century, the one separating Columbus's sail in 1492 from Jamestown's founding in 10-0-something." This story actually ends at Plymouth Rock, rather than begins.
As with his previous books, Horwitz sets off to travel the routes of the explorers that he studies. He begins with the Vikings. Then he switches to Columbus, Coronado, DeSoto and other Spanish explorers. It wasn't until the French made their appearance on American soil that the English finally arrived. So why is Plymouth a "rock star for tourists?" "Anglo bias seemed the obvious culprit, but it didn't altogether explain Americans' amnesia."
Like Horwitz, there was much that I didn't remember about early American history as well. I certainly didn't remember that Coronado traveled as far as Kansas from Mexico, or that DeSoto reached the Mississippi River from Florida. I never knew that the French had a presence in ... Read More
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Tony Horwitz does the leg work for us. Read and discover some of the history you were never taught in school. Add some zing to your home library, read Horwitz.
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In his typical humorous and inquisitive style, Tony Horwitz sets to trace the roots of the "discovery" of America, and more importantly - to dispel some of the most prevalent myths around it.
It appears that most Americans believe that Columbus discovered America and that the US soil was first colonized by pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, that landed in Plymouth (a bit south of modern Boston) in 1620. The truth is far from that. Horwitz spends the 400 pages of this book telling about the real story behind America's colonization, starting with Viking discoverers at the turn of the first millennium, through first Spanish and French settlements and finally the founding of Jamestown, a colony in Virginia that preceded Plymouth by several years.
The book is composed of two intermixed themes. The one is a historical account, facts and research the author gleaned from the all material he could find on the subject (and in the end of the book you can see a quite complete bibliography). The other is a more personal story of Horwitz's own travels through the sites he describes in his historical accounts, trying to find traces of history and talking with local people. In his discussions, he mainly tries to dig up the "hard questions" - of why some historical facts are popularized and spread, and others, while objectively more important, are forgotten and sometimes even knowingly hidden.
There are a couple of nice quotes on his conclusions near the end ... Read More
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I was a big fan of Tony Horwitz's other works and this new offering did not fail to disappoint. He is able to weave history and humor into a volume that is hard to put down. It should be on every high school history students' reading list (or college for that matter). As our nation continues to struggle with its identity in the modern era, this book gives a foundation for where and how it all began. Anyone even remotely interested in travel and history will be entertained by this well researched tome.
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Half history, half travelogue. The history covered in this book is pretty much ignored by our educational system which focuses on the pilgrims of 1620 while the much earlier explorations and settlements are generally ignored. This book helps fill those holes.
During the author's travels as he researches these histories, he meets a number of fascinating characters who add color and interest to the narrative.
The conclusion of the author is that myth always trumps facts. Our creation story is based on the myths surrounding the pilgrims and ignores the facts of earlier explorations.
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