Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 464 pages
- Published by: Henry Holt and Co. April 29, 2008
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0805076034
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0805076035
-
Book Dimensions:
9.2 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
- Weighs: 1.6 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
Signature
Reviewed by Robert Sullivan. As opposed to the Pilgrims, Tony Horwitz begins his journey at Plymouth Rock.Plymouth Rock is a myth. The Pilgrims—who, Horwitz notes, were on a mission that was based less on freedom and the schoolbook history ideas the president of the United States typically mentions when he pardons a turkey at the White House and more on finding a cure for syphilis—may or may not have noticed it. In about 1741, a church elder in Plymouth, winging it, pointed out a boulder that is now more like a not-at-all-precious stone. Three hundred years later, people push and shove to see it in summer tourist season, wearing T-shirts that say, America's Hometown. Which eventually leads an overstimulated (historically speaking) Horwitz to come close to starting a fight in a Plymouth bar. Not to Virginians it isn't, he writes. Or Hispanics or Indians.Forget all the others, his bar mate says loudly.
This is the friggin' beginning of America!
A Voyage Long and Strange is a history-fueled, self-imposed mission of rediscovery, a travelogue that sets out to explore the surprisingly long list of explorers who discovered America, and what
discovered means anyway, starting with the Vikings in A.D. 1000, and ending up on the
Mayflower. Horwitz (
Blue Latitudes;
Confederates in the Attic) even dons conquistador gear, making the narrative surprisingly fun and funny, even as he spends a lot of time describing just how badly Columbus and subsequently the Spanish treated people. (Highpoint: a trip to a Columbus battle site in the Dominican Republic, when Horwitz gets stuck with a nearly inoperable rental car in a Sargasso Sea of traffic.) In the course of tracing the routes of de Soto in, for instance, Tennessee, and the amazing Cabeza de Vaca (Daniel Day Lewis's next role?) in Tucson, Ariz., Horwitz drives off any given road to meet the back-to-the-land husband-and-wife team researching Coronado's expeditions through Mexico; or the Fed Ex guy who may be a link to the lost colonists of the Elizabethan Roanoke expedition.Horwitz can occasionally be smug about what constitutes custom—who's to say that a Canadian tribe's regular karaoke night isn't a community-building exercise as valid as the communal sweat that nearly kills Horwitz early on in his thousands of miles of adventures? But as a character himself, he is friendly and always working hard to listen and bear witness. I hate the whole Thanksgiving story, says a newspaper editor of Spanish descent, a man he meets along the trail of Coronado. We should be eating chili, not turkey. But no one wants to recognize the Spanish because it would mean admitting that they got here decades before the English.
Robert Sullivan is the author of Cross Country, How Not to Get Rich
and Rats
. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Product Review
"A romp through the sixteenth century. . . Horwitz has an ear for a good yarn and an instinct for the trail leading to an entertaining anecdote." --
The Washington Post"A winning and eye-opening read. Horwitz's charm, smarts, impeccable research and curiosity make this a voyage worth taking." --
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)"Accessible to all ages, hands-on and immensely readable, this book invites readers to search out America's story for themselves." --
Kirkus Reviews"By conveying our past so heartily, handsomely and winsomely, Tony Horwitz does America proud." --
The Providence Journal"Funny and lively. . . Popular history of the most accessible sort. The stories Horwitz tells are full of vivid characters and wild detail." --
The New York Times Book Review"Honest, wonderfully written, and heroically researched. . . Horwitz unearths whole chapters of American history that have been ignored." --
Boston Globe"Horwitz writes in a breezy, engaging style, so this combination of popular history and travelogue will be ideal for general readers." --
Booklist (starred review)"Rich with reading pleasure. Like travel writer Bill Bryson, Horwitz has a penchant for meeting colorful characters and getting himself into bizarre situations." --
The Christian Science Monitor"This readable and vastly entertaining history travelogue is highly recommended." --
Library Journal (starred review)
Reader ReviewsA delightful historical narrative! And quite refreshing in this age of disinformation. While our public schools continue their relentless rewriting of history to fit the agenda of special interest groups (such as the criminal protection lobby's removal of firearms from image of Washington crossing the Delaware), it's good to come across a book based on open-minded research. Turning the conventional pattern completely backwards, Horwitz seeks information and then forms conclusions. That approach made this book a "keeper." In fact, Horwitz deftly defrocks a long list of myths, half-truths, and utter fabrications that are almost canonical today. He defies another convention by staying on topic. If you've been offended by books the author uses to segue into political side issues, you'll be pleased at Horwitz's not doing that. Tony Horwitz follows the centuries-long European discovery of the new world. This discovery didn't, as popular myth holds, start at Plymouth Rock. Nor, as we are told during Thanksgiving each year, did European settlement begin with the Pilgrims. In fact, those folks didn't call themselves Pilgrims--that's a label fabricated for them in much later times. The discovery, exploration, and settlement occurred in fits and starts. It was more stumbling and bumbling than it was heroic conquest. And it was more often brutal than it was noble. While reading this, I frequently laughed aloud. Horwitz has a knack for keeping things lively with quips, barbs, and acerbic wit. His own adventures while visiting the many places discussed in the book sometimes produced situations that were farcical enough for a few chuckles. At other times, the people he ran across were, themselves, hilarious. As entertaining as it is, the real value of this book its actual information. Horwitz doggedly pursued answers to questions, and while that pursuit provided ample basis for comedy, it also provided answers that are worth knowing. In some cases, that research didn't provide an answer but merely proved the official propaganda wrong. There are some things we simply do not and cannot know. When a work purports to be nonfiction and yet has answers to everything, you can be fairly confident that work isn't reliable. Horwitz voyage produced some frustrations for him and left unanswered many questions that would have been nice to have answered. The fact he doesn't just plug in an answer he likes makes me fairly confident this work is reliable. This book is about 400 pages long and contains 15 maps. The Prologue explains why Horwitz embarked on this quest. Despite his extensive background in American history, there were large gaps. And he got to thinking about this. He shares some of those thoughts in the Prologue. This book is divided into three Parts: 1. Discovery. 2. Conquest. 3. Settlement. Part One consists of four chapters, one each for Vinland (mostly Lief and related Eirickssons), 1492 (Columbus, et al), Santo Domingo (Columbus again), and Hispaniola (lots of laughs and oddball characters). Part Two devotes five chapters to the conquest. Each chapter covers a separate geographic area: Gulf Coast (an assortment of Spanish explorers, dandies, and conquistadors), Southwest (to the seven cities of stone), the plains (the sea of grass that seemed to swallow up many explorers and potential settlers), the South (De Soto does Dixie), and the Mississippi. On that last one, I have always wondered how this river got such an ungainly name. Horwitz reveals the answer. Part Three contains four chapters, each of which provides insight into the settlements in St. Augustine (and other Florida places), Roanoke (and other Virginia places), Jamestown, and Plymouth, respectively. The chapter on Plymouth rips apart several myths, including the many that surround the Thanksgiving holiday. The source notes and bibliography are extensive, which would be expected of a book that is this well-researched. What those reference don't reflect is the sheer footwork Hortwitz did. And I don't mean figuratively. He actually walked where these explorers, conquerors, and settlers walked. He visited sites, spoke with other researchers, and interviewed people who had starkly different views of what occurred. All of this research contributed to a credible work that is also quite funny in places.
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