This book really knocked my socks off! Probably because I know so little history of the USA, despite being a life-long citizen! This covers so many hidden stories, it is just a delight. I love learning the many ways that the standard narrative is just one perspective and the alternatives have richness and validity to match.

The book is a collection of essays along with a few poems and illustrations. The events discussed encompass quite a range, from the first European colonists up to the Alcatraz occupation of 1970.

I live in the Catskills so I was fascinated to hear about the Ramapo mountains that are not far from here. Maybe I will ride my bike down there to explore! But driving up on I-287 from Philadelphia a week ago or so, that sign for Ringwood really meant something for me, which it never had in the past. Yeah those mountains aren't so high but they sure are steep! Could be some tough biking!

Then to learn about the Metis people. Growing up I was always told about one ancestral line of our family being French-Canadian. Oh yeah, Metis! My mother's mother's mother was Marie Petit, near as I can tell. A fine Metis name!

Yeah this book just opened up my mind to so many dimensions! What do I do with all this?! ( )

Gone to Croatan will remind you that the history of America, from the beginning, has also been a history of resistance, interdependence, and cooperation; full of people who dared to live and love in defiance of maps, boundaries, taboos, custom, religion, and class. From the Calico Indians to the Whiskey Rebellion to land pirates, nomads, labor organizers, and more, the stories in this book can fill even the most cynical reader with a sense of hope and possibility. This is the sort of history that can help shape the future. ( )

There are some interesting bits and pieces in this pseudo-history, but overall it is a rambling collection of assertions based on very little fact. Fetishizing history the way it is done in Gone to Croatan is annoying in that you have to comb through the pages in an attempt to construct some sense of the peoples and times being described. ( )

Sisällysluettelosta:
I. Homage To Hugo Prosper Leaming-Bey
John Knoepfle: “lines for the tribe of ben ishmael”; Hugo Prosper Leaming: “The Ben Ishmael Tribe: Fugitive Nation of the Old Northwest”; Peter Lamborn Wilson: “Lost Ancestors: An Introduction to Pooch Van Dunk”; Pooch Van Dunk: “Indian Heritage”; Gail Tremblay: “Owning Difference”
II. Discovering Our Ancestors: The Hidden History of North America
Meridel LeSueur: “Wounded Knee”; James Koehnline: “Legend of the Great Dismal Maroons”; Peter Lamborn Wilson: “Caliban’s Masque: Spiritual anarchy and the Wild Man in Colonial America”; Timothy Miller: “Cornelius Plockhoy and the Beginnings of the American Communal Tradition”; Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh: “The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves and the Atlantic Working Class in the Eighteenth Century”; David Porter: “’Anarchy’ in the American Revolution”

Autonomedia / Ak Press