A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World
A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World
By Tony Horwitz
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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.
Product Details
- Published on: 2008-04-29
- Released on: 2008-04-29
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 464 pages
Editorial Reviews
The New York Times Book Review
“Funny and lively. . . Popular history of the most accessible sort…. The stories Horwitz tells are full of vivid characters and wild detail.”
Review
“Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Horwitz has presented what could be described as a guide for those who are historically ignorant of the “lost century” between the first voyage of Columbus and the establishment of Jamestown in 1607. In this informative, whimsical, and thoroughly enjoyable account, Horwitz describes the exploits of various explorers and conquistadores and enriches the stories with his own experiences when visiting some of the lands they “discovered.” Horwitz writes in a breezy, engaging style, so this combination of popular history and travelogue will be ideal for general readers.—Booklist (starred review)
“Irreverent, effervescent… accessible to all ages, hands-on and immensely readable, this book invites readers to search out America ’s story for themselves.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Popular history of the most accessible sort…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 surrounds us and presses in on us, whether we know it or not.”—New York Times Book Review
“Horwitz, author of the bestselling Confederates in the Attic, skillfully combines history and travel in this entertaining, insightful account of his road trip into America’s past.”—Christian Science Monitor
“Horwitz’s charm, smarts, impeccable research and curiosity make this a voyage worth taking.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer
Kirkus Reviews
“Accessible to all ages, hands-on and immensely readable, this book invites readers to search out America’s story for themselves.”
Customer Reviews
Fascinating and vivid
When a history book describes Plymouth Rock as looking like a “fossilized potato” and Florida’s capitol building as “The Big D…,” you know you’re in for something unusual. Having gone to college in Tallahassee, I can attest to the reasons for the capitol’s nickname — its “towering shaft flanked by gonadlike domes,” as author Tony Horwitz puts it. He writes with equal wit throughout “A Voyage Long and Strange,” a smart, funny book that skewers traditional views of our nation’s past. I couldn’t put it down.
The book explores the lusty, violent period in American history between Columbus and Jamestown. Horwitz embarks on a journey of his own, exploring the modern-day places where our country began. Along the way he uncovers some strange truths — Columbus never saw or set foot on any land that became U.S. soil; Pocahontas was only 10 years old when she met John Smith and they were never romantic; Ponce de Leon was looking not for the Fountain of Youth but rather gold, just like so many others. The overall picture is cruel, hilarious, messy, unfair and always fascinating.
Over a dozen maps and many historical black and white illustrations are scattered through the book.
Here’s the chapter list:
Part 1: Discovery
1. Vinland: First contact
2. 1492: The hidden half of the globe
3. Santo Domingo: The Columbus jinx
4. Dominican Republic: You think there are still Indians?
Part II: Conquest
5. The Gulf Coast: Naked in the New World
6. The Southwest: To the Seven Cities of Stone
7. The Plains: Sea of grass
8. The South: De Soto does Dixie
9. The Mississippi: Conquistador’s last stand
Part III: Settlement
10. Florida: Fountain of youth, river of blood
11. Roanoke: Lost in the lost colony
12. Jamestown: The captain and the naturals
13. Plymouth: A tale of two rocks
Long, Strange, and a Ball of Laughs
Who could have guessed that history (and current events) could be so much fun. Horwitz, whose previous triumphs have included books about Civil War reenactments, travels in the Middle East, and a retracing of Captain Cook’s voyages in the South Pacific, turns his gimlet eye on the first European forays into the New World. “Washing up” in Plymouth, Massachusetts one day on a New England road trip, he buys a beer at the Myles Standish Liquor store, beds down at the William Bradford inn, and then mocks (in his mind) the clueless tourists at Plymouth Rock. But as he mulls over his experience, he realizes how little (even as a history major) he knows about the origins of the land that became America. The rest, as they say, is history, and history of a most witty and enlightening kind. Who knew, for instance, that Juan Ponce de Leon came to Florida looking for gold and slaves like everyone else, and not for the Fountain of Youth? or that the man for whom the DeSoto touring car was named was a butcher of unequaled savagery? The first feast in the New World that might appropriately be called Thanksgiving took place in St. Augustine and probably consisted of a stew of salt pork and garbanzo beans. (And there is some contention between Floridians and “the powdered wig” states over who should get credit for the national holiday.) A Voyage Long and Strange is a ball of laughs and a veil of tears–the offhand executions of women and children play out in the same text as deliberations upon whether moose is kosher and whether one should ride the “Trolley of the Doomed” in St. Tourist Trap, Florida. Horwitz goofs some stuff up–he thinks Mormons believe themselves to be descendants of the Nephites–but on the whole this is a fascinating, impossible-to-put-down look at where we came from and what we have become.
Travels in space and time
Some of my favorite books are those in which the authors recreate historical voyages. Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki and Ra journeys, Colin Tubrin’s pilgrimage along the Silk Road, Dayton Duncan’s re-tracing the Lewis & Clark path: I love reading that stuff. And now Tony Horwitz has contributed to the genre with his A Voyage Long and Strange, a book in which he “roams the annals of early America” (p. 7). Readers who remember his Confederates in the Attic can well imagine the insight with which Horwitz explores the history of the New World’s discovery and the wry sense of humor he brings to his personal rediscovery of ancient routes.
Horwitz set out to explore all the points in the New World “discovered” and described by early explorers. Focusing on the three categories (that frequently, in reality, overlapped) of discovery, conquest, and settlement, Horwitz narrates the history of, for example, Coronado’s search for the Cities of Gold (pp. 134-164) or the settlement of Roanoke’s “lost colony” (pp. 293-325), and interweaves in the narration accounts of his own travels over Coronado’s route and his exploration of the Carolina peninsula where the lost colony once flourished. The mixture makes for exciting reading, lending a contemporary vitality to the historical descriptions.
I was especially intrigued by Horwitz’s account of the Spanish exploration of the New World (chapters 5-9). It’s as good a short account of the conquest of the southeastern coastal regions, the southwestern deserts, and the plains west of the Mississippi, as any I know. Chapter 9, which deals with de Soto’s rather aimless trek north of what today is Louisiana into Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas–which Horwitz describes as “wandering blind, deaf, and mute in the middle of the continent” (p. 255)–is particularly interesting.* It really does underscore just how much of a leap into the unknown the early visitors to the New World were making.
All in all, an interesting read with a good bibliography and several helpful maps. Highly recommended.
________
* While trying to recreate de Soto’s confused ramblings, Horowitz makes his way to Arkansas City, where he’s been told he’ll find de Soto’s coffin. But Horwitz discovers he’s been on a wild goose chase. As a city elder tells him, “Young man, I do believe you’ve been led on. Just like those Spanish, always chasing their gold” (p. 259). In more ways than one, then, Horwitz walked in the early explorers’ shoes.
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