A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World
By: Horwitz, Tony
When it comes to history and the “discovery” of America, Tony Horwitz is a dummy and he is betting that his readers are as well. During a visit to Plymouth Rock, Horwitz discovers, much to his priate school educated chagrin, that he knew next to nothing about the people who traveled the continent (before and after Columbus), much less the folks who inhabited “America” before European contact commenced. Horwitz writes a well-paced and humorous travelogue of self-tutoring as he sweats it out in a lodge with MicMacs in Newfoundland, follows Coronado’s trail all the way to Kansas (who knew?) and tours present-day Roanoke which was briefly settled, not by fantasized Pilgrim forebears, but by a, “… motley crew of slave traders, tourists, castaways and Tudor knights….” Horwitz neatly balances historical narrative with his own present-day travel stories for an engaging and entertaining history lesson.
Reviewer: Tim Strawn
