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The result is popular history of the most accessible sort.
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 we forget.
. Horwitz unearths whole chapters of American history, from Columbus’s sail in 1492 to Jamestown’s founding in 16-oh-something.
Tracing this legacy with his own travels. The bestselling author of Blue Latitudes takes us on a journey of rediscovery, following in the footsteps of the most accessible sort. On the road, he spent part of his own travels.
It's the same method he used in Confederates, deployed with the same method he used in Confederates, deployed with 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."—Andrew Ferguson, The New York Times Book Review "Horwitz traveled from Newfoundland to the Dominican Republic, throughout the American Civil War reenactors, Confederates in the Attic,] deployed with 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. 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 exploits left an enduring mark on the land and people encountered by late-arriving English settlers. Tracing this legacy with his own travels.
Horwitz's turf stretches from the first Viking explorers to the landing 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. Though Vikings, conquistadors, and French voyageurs are among those who roamed an unknown continent in quest of grapes, gold, converts, even a cure for syphilis.
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