A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World
- ISBN 10: 0805076034
- ISBN 13: 9780805076035
- Author: Tony Horwitz
- Edition: Hardcover
- Release: 2008-04-29
- Format: Hardcover (464 pages)
- List Price: $27.50
- Tags: History, Americas, United States, World, Expeditions & Discoveries, Travel
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Book Description: The bestselling author of Blue Latitudes takes us on a thrilling and eye-opening voyage to pre-Mayflower AmericaOn 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. Tony Horwitz is the author of Blue Latitudes, Confederates in the Attic, and Baghdad Without a Map. He is also a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who has worked for The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker. He lives in Martha’s Vineyard with his wife, Geraldine Brooks, and their son, Nathaniel. 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. Determined to find out what happened in between, he embarks on a journey of rediscovery, following in the footsteps of the many Europeans who preceded the Pilgrims to America.Blending of history, myth, and misadventure, A Voyage Long and Strange captures the awe and drama of first contact. Vikings, conquistadors, and French voyageurs are among those who roamed an unknown continent in quest of grapes, gold, converts, even a cure for syphilis. Though most failed, their 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 is enshrined and what is forgotten. Displaying his trademark talent for humor, narrative, and historical insight, A Voyage Long and Strange allows readers to rediscover the New World. "The pace never flags, even for easily distracted readers, because Horwitz knows how to quick-cut between historical narrative and a breezy account of his own travels. It's the same method he used in [Confederates in the Attic,] deployed with the same success, and unlike many other, less journalistic histories, in which the material is displayed at a curator's remove, it has the immense value of injecting the past into the present—showing us history as an element of contemporary life, something that still surrounds us and presses in on us, whether we know it or not."—Andrew Ferguson, The New York Times Book Review "Never mind his Pulitzer, the best-selling books, the writing jobs at The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker: Tony Horwitz is a dope. Really, he'll tell you so himself, and often does, though not in so many words, in his funny and lively new travelogue, A Voyage Long and Strange. Horwitz is probably best known as the author of Confederates in the Attic, an exploration of how the American Civil War and its cultural backwash still move otherwise semi-normal Americans to do crazy things, like sleep outdoors in 19th-century-style long johns while pretending to be Abner Doubleday. In that book as in this one, Horwitz assumes the pose of a baby-boomer Everyman, overschooled but undereducated. He is chagrined at the basic historical facts he was once taught but can no longer remember or, worse, never knew to begin with. Like so many of us, he is the incarnation of Father Guido Sarducci’s Five Minute University, where degrees are awarded for reciting the two or three things the average liberal-arts graduate remembers from four years of college. In A Voyage Long and Strange, Horwitz is surprised to learn how little he knows about the Europeans who 'discovered' America. (One thing he does remember from college is to wrap those scare-quote marks around politically contentious words like 'discover.') His astonishing ignorance dawned on him during a visit to Plymouth Rock. 'I'd mislaid an entire century, the one separating Columbus's sail in 1492 from Jamestown’s founding in 16-0-something,' he writes. 'Expensively educated at a private school and university—a history major, no less!—I'd matriculated to middle age with a third grader's grasp of early America.' Horwitz resolves to remedy his ignorance by embarking on an intensive self-tutorial mixed with lots of reporting and running around. He looks for Columbus's remains in the Dominican Republic; tracks Coronado through Mexico, Texas and even Kansas; sifts evidence of the Vikings' landing in Newfoundland; and gives the Anglos their due in tidewater Virginia. The result is popular history of the most accessible sort. The pace never flags, even for easily distracted readers, because Horwitz knows how to quick-cut between historical narrative and a breezy account of his own travels. It's the same method he used in Confederates, deployed with the same success, and unlike many other, less journalistic histories, in which the material is displayed at a curator's remove, it has the immense value of injecting the past into the present—showing us history as an element of contemporary life, something that still surrounds us and presses in on us, whether we know it or not. Usually not. The stories he tells are full of vivid characters and wild detail . . . He is an energetic debunker."—Andrew Ferguson, The New York Times Book Review  "Horwitz traveled from Newfoundland to the Dominican Republic, throughout the American South and Southwest and up to New England, vastly different zones once equally uncharted, now distinct and unrelated. On the road, he spent part of his time reading historical books informing him of what happened in these spots, and then part of his time seeking out guides who led him to the sites, or shared the local lore as it has been handed down through the centuries. He has an ear for a good yarn and an instinct for the trail leading to an entertaining anecdote, and he deftly weaves his reportorial finds with his historical material."—Nina Burleigh, The Washington Post “Honest, wonderfully written, and heroically researched . . . Horwitz unearths whole chapters of American history that have been ignored.”—The Boston Globe"Readers of Horwitz's 1998 classic about Civil War reenactors, Confederates in the Attic, won't need to be persuaded to pick up his latest work. Horwitz's turf stretches from the first Viking explorers to the landing of the Pilgrims—but it wouldn't be Horwitzian if he didn't also engage with their contemporary avatars, from
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