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Loading... A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World (2008)by Tony Horwitz
Maybe because I remember a lot of what I learned in school about early European exploration of the Americas, this book just was not as interesting to me as the other Tony Horwitz books I have read. As always, he contrasts history with contemporary attitudes toward the past and that exploration, too, was not as interesting as in "Confederates in the Attic" or "Blue Latitudes". If you feel you need a quick course on Viking settlements in North America and on the Spanish explorations and conquests, this is probably the book for you. It just wasn't for me. (  ) nmele | Apr 6, 2013 |  Nicely done. Horwitz isn't for everyone; he likes to combine pop history with his own travelogues, which turns some people off. But he's easy to read, and (from what I can gather) he gets his facts straight. For folks like me who need an easy introduction to one phase of history or another, he's pretty useful. (  ) AlCracka | Apr 2, 2013 | Temporarily on hold.  JayLehnertz | Mar 31, 2013 | I really enjoyed this travelogue through the pre-history of the Americas. I don't have any kind of connection to American identity, being Canadian, but I really enjoyed learning more about the explorers and people who were on this continent before the stories we all know. This book was very readable, and very interesting. Definitely recommended reading. ( ) puttocklibrary | Oct 26, 2012 | It's rare that you see an historical travel narrative that takes into account the importance of historical myth as a parallel to historical fact. Horwitz, however, manages to do so in this volume. His analysis runs from the Vikings who still felt hafvalla, lost at sea, even when they landed in Newfoundland, to the Spanish, who crossed vast tracts of the Americas before the English even settled, and changed the landscape in ways that we now cannot even begin to imagine. Alongside all this, however, he manages to present the myths of America's discovery and founding, both for U.S. and Canadian audiences, in a way that does not invalidate them against the historic narrative, but instead incorporates them and explains their import in a way that is respectful of both fact and legend. (  ) themythicalcodfish | Oct 20, 2012 |
Never mind his Pulitzer, the best-selling books, the writing jobs at The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker: Tony Horwitz is a dope. Really, he’ll tell you so himself, and often does, though not in so many words, in his funny and lively new travelogue, “A Voyage Long and Strange.”
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