Synopses & Reviews
Long before the Pilgrims, other Europeans pioneered North America, seeking land, converts and cities of gold. By exploring America's lost, or often repressed, heritage, award winning writer Tony Horwitz unmasks the country's founding myths.
A Voyage Long and Strange opens with the Vikings in ad 1000, but focuses on the neglected period in early American history between Columbus's voyage of 1492 and the Pilgrims' arrival in 1620. Horwitz recaptures the adventures of non-English explorers and the drama of the first contact with native peoples during this period. He also sets out on his own journey of rediscovery, travelling in the explorers' wake to reveal the enduring influence that early Europeans had on America. Why, Horwitz asks, do we remember history the way we do? During his long and strange journey, from Indian sweat lodges to Columbus's crypt, he exposes the revealing gap between what we enshrine and what we forget about our past. A Voyage Long and Strange is a gripping historical adventure that illuminates not only America's early European history, but also the memory and myths that give the past power in the present day.
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"History of the most accessible sort...[F]ull of vivid characters and wild detail." The New York Times
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"Poignant and hilarious...Riveting." The Seattle Times
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"Wonderfully written, and heroically researched...Horwitz unearths whole chapters of American history that have been ignored." The Boston Globe
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About the Author
Tony Horwitz is the bestselling 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.