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| A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World | 
 enlarge | Author: Tony Horwitz
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Category: Book
List Price: $27.50
Buy New: $14.00
You Save: $13.50 (49%)
New (38) Used (20) Collectible (9) from $12.74
Avg. Customer Rating:  41 reviews
Sales Rank: 2446
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 0805076034
Dewey Decimal Number: 970.01
EAN: 9780805076035
ASIN: 0805076034
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 "Myth trumps fact, always does, always has, always will." June 4, 2008
Tony Horwitz says that he set on the course of researching and writing A VOYAGE LONG AND STRANGE because of his own ignorance of not really knowing what happened between Columbus's landfall in the New World in 1492 and the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock in 1620. Generations of children come away from school believing the Pilgrims were the first at everything and everything was really cozy with the Indians at the first Thanksgiving. A visit to what looks like a dimpled potato or, as a tourist is overheard to remark, "The Plymouth Pebble," ignited curiosity about the old stories. Off went Horwitz on his own voyage long and strange.
I came to this history not quite as ignorant as Horwitz. I vacation at the Outer Banks, so I know about the Lost Colony (1587). In my baby boomer education at a progressive public school, I soaked up the stories of the conquistadors' explorations in search of riches. I partly grew up around in the vicinity of old missions in California, I've read DEATH COMES TO THE ARCHBISHOP, which places rogue European priests in the southwest almost since Columbus, and Nancy Marie Brown's recent THE FAR TRAVELER, about the Vikings, in addition to books on archeology and other histories for general readers. While I may have been ahead of Horwitz at the get go, he ended up with a lot of surprises for me, not the least of them in his contemporary travels of the historical sites.
This is a thumping good read; I could not put it down to which people who know me will testily attest. Horwitz is a fine writer and knows where and how to go for a story. He does have a penchant for the self-punishing adventures---he endures a Native American Indian sweat lodge, excruciating Caribbean heat, and hefty chain mail at a 16th century re-enactment in Florida heat, all for his art and knowledge. He is often funny, but the truth that emerges is not. In his research and travels, we find the roots of many of our society's contemporary divides and preoccupations. Though he never says it exactly, I find the truth he uncovers has very ancient roots: the Conquistadors arrive wearing armor and helmets and wielding brutality straight out of Roman and Medieval Europe; the ethos of might is right is out of those times, too. Modernity may have propelled Columbus but it took a back seat once he arrived this side of the pond. It took a long time for colonists to learn how to live on this continent, which took different skills than it required to live in Europe; and, apparently, we're still figuring it out.
Horwitz comes home to America June 10, 2008
I came to Horwitz, like many others, through Confederates in the Attic : Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War, which had special resonance to me personally because of my birthplace roughly equidistant from Gettysburg and Antietam just north of the Mason-Dixon line, a dividing line that was always the near horizon (to the north or south) the first 40 years of my life before I moved deeper into the old Confederacy (Raleigh, NC).
I followed him to the South Pacific and around the world on the Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before he sailed in the wake of Captain James Cook, a subject (extreme voyages of discovery involving years off the map and far from the measured time of family, news, and career) which I find endlessly fascinating in an age when we say "call me when you get there" before a 30 minutes trip to the store.
This time, Horwitz comes home, taking on the discovery of America, which of course resonates with American readers nationally as well as personally. And I have rated all three of these books the highest honor because of his unique ability to concisely recap the historical significance of the events and place, then interweave the attitudes and actions of the descendants (sometimes familial, sometimes historical) of those events and places in our day. So this book isn't about who discovered America, and how, and why, but about how we today think, believe, feel, talk, and act about the who, the how, and the why.
That Horwitz does so with an almost gentle ability to befriend and pull from complete strangers their most genuine thoughts and reactions, and is able to report them with humor and (usually) without rancor, is another key component of what makes his books so successful. I hesitate to use the word gentle, for he proves his personal bravery and chutzpah numerous times throughout the course of his books; gentleness is not always meekness, as Horwitz demonstrates here by challenging unfriendly people (Native Americans closed to outsiders), taking uncharted paths (getting lost deep in the Dominican Republic in search of Columbus), and tackling unknown and extreme challenges (a sweat lodge in Newfoundland).
As always, Horwitz does so with his patented light blend of popular history, but provides roots for deeper research in his notes on the sources and extended bibliography of primary and secondary materials. His research is always detailed and well synthesized into his writing, and I have found myself with two reactions to each of his books: noting sources for further reading I need to do, and referring to the road atlas or web sites to find if such wondrous and crazy places as Horwitz describes really do exist.
Perhaps that is the real secret to his success--he takes the places we live in and look past every day, and makes us look at them with fresh eyes and amazement at the great, insignificant and sometimes silly things that have happened there, and how they have focused our eyes and shaped what we see.
Some sources I have previously read and reviewed that extend Horwitz's history:
1421: The Year China Discovered America tells a tale that Horwitz explicitly leaves out in the interest of keeping his book to manageable length: the intriguing possibility that the Chinese also discovered America before Columbus (with this catalog of pre-Columbian "discoverers", one pictures a fully populated continent whose coasts are dotted with earlier immigrant arrivals thumbing their noses at laggard Columbus!).
The Last Voyage of Columbus: Being the Epic Tale of the Great Captain's Fourth Expedition, Including Accounts of Swordfight, Mutiny, Shipwreck, Gold, War, Hurricane, and Discovery carries the Columbus story from the beginning Horwitz outlines to its mostly painful conclusion.
Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America gives more background on this mystery man who is accorded naming honors on the continent into which Columbus crash-landed.
Brutal Journey: The Epic Story of the First Crossing of North America is the full account of Spanish surviver De Vaca's astounding journey across the Southwest, one of Horwitz's points of reference that sound too bizarre to be true.
The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World, Carlos Fuentes literary and illuminating take on Spanish-American history is referenced in the source notes and bibliography.
Searching for Virginia Dare: A Fool's Errand is one writer's account of an attempt to resolve the "Lost Colony" mystery.
Savage Kingdom: The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America provides more details behind John Smith's leadership and flaws in this 2007 accounting of Jamestown history (too new to be in Horwitz' bibliography).
Horwitz, as good as ever June 12, 2008
It's been written before that Tony Horwitz "makes history fun". I couldn't agree with that statement more. I've read all of his novels and have been captivated by each of them. His travel writings literally take the reader along on the journey, and the inter-twinings of the past with the present unravel the historical mysteries he explores in a sometimes hilarious light.
I haven't finished "A Voyage Long and Strange" as of yet. I've been reading it very slowly as if it were a reward I need to earn first. I don't want it to end. I really can't get enough of Horwitz's writing. I sincerely hope he's at work again on his next novel.
 Great read, well written June 15, 2008
I greatly enjoyed this book. While being scholarly sound, it is easy reading. It is the kind of book a teacher of history should embrace.
great light and at times funny look at "real" history of the U.S June 20, 2008
This book offers a look at what really took place from the Vikings to the Mayflower.
At times serious and other time humorous. well done and easy and too fast reading.
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