Review: A Voyage Long and Strange
Tony Horwitz
Read: 12/26/17-1/3/18
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
From Goodreads: 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.
My thoughts:
So, I really enjoyed this book. I typically don’t read nonfiction, but I made a New Year’s Resolution to read at least 12 this year. They problem I have with nonfiction is I find them dry and I don’t have a head for names and dates. My brain just kind of blurs them out when I read them. But A Voyage Long and Strange gave me such in depth history on each person and important date, that I felt like they weren’t just words in a book, it was a story.
What I really liked that although Horwitz gives really in depth information about the past, he allows the reader to come up for air by describing the people and the places that he discovered while researching the book. I got a mind break. I also enjoyed the chronological order of the book. It starts with the Vikings and ends with the pilgrims. I felt like school really left out so much when teaching about the discovery of America. I learned that Columbus founded the New World in 1492, them some stuff happened, and then the Pilgrims showed up in 1620. I never learned that Columbus never stepped foot in America. And I also never learned that the Spanish were already in St. Augustine, a city with a fortress, church, monastery, hospital, and a hundred dwellings. In 1565! 55 YEARS before the Pilgrims landed
.
Horwitz also interspersed the learning with some humor:
“Barlowe believed the Indian name for the region he’d scouted was Wingandacoa. Hariot soon learned this was actually a phrase meaning “You wear fine clothes.””
Books like these are the reason why I wanted to read more nonfiction. It makes me more aware of my world around me. Like, Horwitz followed De Soto’s path through the Etowah Mounds in Cartersville, GA.. I live 40 minutes away from there (I got married 10 minutes away from there as well) and have never visited them.