A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World

by Tony Horwitz

book data

521 ratings, 3.84 average rating, 206 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		18%
4		52%
3		25%
2		3%
1		0%

edit

published

April 29th 2008 by Henry Holt and Co.

binding

Hardcover, 445 pages

url

http://www.voyagelongandstrange.com/

setting

Plymouth, MA

isbn

0805076034 (isbn13: 9780805076035)

description

The bestselling author of Blue Latitudes takes us on a thrilling and eye-opening voyage to pre-Mayflower America.

On a chance visit to Plym...more

find at: Amazon | Half.com | Barnes & Noble | compare prices ($12.99)…

new topic
discuss this book

topics	posts	views	last activity
75 Books 2009: Maphead's "Twilight Free" 75 for 2009	3	13	2 days ago, 04:09AM
50 Books A Year: nearly half way through 2009 how many you read so far	113	600	2 days ago, 08:40PM
M/T Reading Friends: TheoAnn's June books	1	23	4 days ago, 12:59PM
M/T Reading Friends: JF, NR	188	144	11 days ago, 03:36AM
The Next Best Boo...: Interesting Non Fiction	114	657	23 days ago, 05:55PM

friend reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

lists with this book

Best books of 2008

876 books | 3283 voters

More lists...

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 1,237)

sort: default (?) | date
filters: all | text-only

08/30/08

Joshua rated it:

Read in September, 2008

Every school kid is taught that Columbus "discovered" America in 1492 and that the Pilgrims stepped onto a rock in 1620, but what happened in between? To shed light on the American "Dark Ages," Tony Horwitz follows the trails, literally by car, blazed by the Vikings, Spanish, French and English explorers and exploiters. He is a very entertaining writer with a touch of sarcasm that is used to debunk the myths we were taught in school.

I liked how he hit the road a...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

1 comment

07/30/08

Mike rated it:

Read in January, 2008

In this work Horwitz fills in the gaping chasm of knowledge we have regarding the exploration of North America by Europeans. Columbus' first landing on his first (of four) voyages WAS incredibly important. So were excursions by the Erikson family, de Leon, da Vaca, Coronado, de Soto and a host of others.

Any person with a shred of interest in American history MUST read this book. Like all Horwitz' work, it is carefully researched and winningly told. He employs his customary meth...more In this work Horwitz fills in the gaping chasm of knowledge we have regarding the exploration of North America by Europeans. Columbus' first landing on his first (of four) voyages WAS incredibly important. So were excursions by the Erikson family, de Leon, da Vaca, Coronado, de Soto and a host of others.

Any person with a shred of interest in American history MUST read this book. Like all Horwitz' work, it is carefully researched and winningly told. He employs his customary method of telling first an historical narrative and then of his own travels through the same territory. He shares his insights into human nature with wry and gentle humor. He teaches history with passion.

I think I would love to share a couple of beers with Tony Horwitz in any of the hundreds of places he has taken me in the half-dozen or so of his books I have read.

I know American history. That is, I know the history of what now goes by the name of the U.S.A. from the years 1620 to the present. I actually have a minor in Colonial History from a major University. I confess that I knew virtually nothing more than the names of the incredible people who populate A Voyage Long and Strange. They deserve to be known.

A few episodes from Horwitz' book that I hope might tease others into reading the whole of it:
The Spanish soldier who, having reached the center of today's Kansas after an epic journey under Coronado from central Mexico, wrote in his diary of laying down on the grass of the Great Plains and losing all sense of being in a space that had any limits at all.

The beautiful Lady of Cofitachequi (in today's North Carolina), who greeted de Soto and his men by standing naked in a canoe oared across a river by her servant men.

The precise spot Erikson and company spent a summer Newfoundland more than a thousand years ago. (It was surprising to me that archeologists agree on this site without reservation.)

Da Vaca's account of drifting, starving, in a raft across the Gulf Coast and crossing the mouth of the Mississippi.

The desperate and sad attempts of the modern Dominican Republic's government to generate tourist revenue through the promotion of their long list of "firsts" (first surviving European town in the hemisphere, first school, first hospital, first baby born to a European woman, etc.)

Mike Riggins
mike@northernlakescc.org(less)

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

2 comments

06/04/08

Jesse rated it:

Read in June, 2008

Early America is weird. There are lots of lost people, lots of cannibalism, vanished expeditions, cities of gold, and a whole lot of maltreatment of natives. Horwitz's history-tourism stuff is always fun and entertaining, and he somehow manages to hook up with a good bunch of cranks and nutsos to track the story's ramifications to the present vividly. This probably works best in Confederates in the Attic, where he's tracking the resonances of the Civil War, and thus the story isn't even over yet...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

02/22/09

Mike rated it:

Read in January, 2009

This is the 2nd Tony Horwitz book I've read; Confederates in the Attic was great, so I thought I'd give this a try. I really enjoyed it. Although, I did read this while sitting next to a pool in Puerto Vallarta in early January sipping many margaritas, so perhaps that's why I was laughing. Anyway, I would totally recommend reading this while having drinks.

So, in this book Tony has discovered he knows nothing about discoverers... those guys that wandered around what is now the Unit...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

01/15/09

Kendra rated it:

I didn't love the end conclusion to this book... it was pretty basic and I guess I expected more. BUT, it's a fabulously interesting tale of the true discovery(s) of America. I loved that the author, a journalist, actually followed the trails of the various Norse, conquistadors, and other explorers who came to our continent before it was truly settled by white outsiders. The things the conquistadors endured were incredible! And the slaughter they rendered on natives, well, brutal is an understat...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

02/05/09

Bookmarks Magazine added it

Horwitz has a knack for insightful, quirky, topical treatments of his subjects, and A Voyage Long and Strange is vintage stuff, recalling the pace and the scope of Horwitz's earlier books and reaffirming that the author has never met a character or a situation that he couldn't transform into an engaging story (witness tales of a visit to a sweat lodge in Newfoundland and a weapons reenactment reminiscent of a scene from Confederates in the Attic). Though critics find Horwitz entertaining, severa

...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

03/04/09

Foster rated it:

bookshelves: exploration, history

Read in March, 2009

I picked up this book on the recommendation of the wonderful folks at Distant Lands travel store in Pasadena, and it was amazing. I was intrigued by the book's premise: the author, bemused by the omission of a century and a half of history from his middle school education, sought to fill in the gap from Columbus' arrival in 1492 to the establishment of the Plymouth colony.

Horowitz unearths a trove of incredible stories, which have been forgotten, ignored, or purposefully left out of...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

09/17/08

Faithy Kingston rated it:

This was a really interesting book both historically and as a look at culture from 1400-1700 in America and abroad. I realised I am so clueless when it comes to the founding of our nation. The author handled this topic in a nice way, without romanticsing the facts and yet still keeping a human appeal. Dragged towards the end,but very enjoyable.

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

1 comment

02/18/09

Darcy rated it:

Read in February, 2009

The adventure begins when the author recognizes that America didn't begin in 1620 with the pilgrims, nor did it get started with Columbus in 1492. Horwitz takes the adventures that we all wish we could, re-tracing the steps of those who first "discovered" the Americas, starting in the frozen north with the Vikings, and eventually ending up at Plymouth Rock. Along the way he meets interesting characters and introduces us to the people behind the history (get ready to have your histori...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

01/13/09

William Blake rated it:

Read in January, 2009

This is an exceptionally readable account of a journalist's attempt to supplement what he discovers is an extremely limited knowledge of early European (pre-Plymouth, in other words) forays into the (mostly North) American continent. In his own quest, he emphasizes the mythology of the Pilgrim's "founding of America" by interestingly documenting the stories of previous Norse, Spanish, and French explorers and would-be profiteers. In addition to relating these stories, he tells of his o...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

06/17/09

Nancy rated it:

(review of isbn 0312428324)

bookshelves: 2009

Read in June, 2009

Solid. This book tells the stories of the Europeans who visited and lived on North American soil before the Mayflower landing. Most of the history here was pretty familiar to me, on the surface. But there were things I didn't know, and things I had forgotten, and Horwitz has an entertaining style that he keeps up while remaining fairly objective. Fun stuff, and neat to have little flashbacks to third-grade history while reading it. I'd definitely recommend it to those of you who feel like a...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

05/30/09

Justin rated it:

Read in June, 2009

In this book, Horwitz applies his style of history-plus-personal reflections-plus-journalistic travelogue that he used so well in "Confederates in the Attic" to the topic of early explorations and settlement of the Americans by Europeans. What worked so well and was so fascinating in Confederates, though, is not as effective here. In the Confederates book, the stories about the modern South that related to the Civil War were engaging and hilarious in their own right, amplifying the his...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

06/21/09

Paige rated it:

bookshelves: currently-reading, history, nonfiction

Read in June, 2009

Many accounts of U.S. history start with the landing of English colonists in Jamestown in the early 1600s. Horwitz unearths the stories of America’s very early European explorers ranging from the Vikings 1,000 years ago to the French, Italian and Spanish explorers of the 1500s. Horwitz focuses particularly on the “lost century” between the arrival of Columbus and the influx of the Pilgrims. What is truly surprising, to me at least, is the extent to which this land of ours was explored ...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

03/28/09

John-Michael rated it:

After having just read Havana Nocturne, a horrible piece of Non-Fiction that treats history like a tabloid, I was very pleased to find that my other book from the library was so well written. The purist historians are bound be grumble since half of Tony's book is about the history of European America 1492-1630, and the other half is a sort of 'investigative journalism' narrative that trails Horwitz across North America getting a feel for the landing sites of the explorers and settlers. The end...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

01/21/09

Jill rated it:

Read in July, 2008

I like this because it teaches facts about history I never learned in school, history of the US that isn't commonly known as well or taught much. It really makes me realize people like Columbus weren't exactly the best guys in the world, enslaving the freindly natives and letting others of his crew plunder and rape some as well, so glad we make him out to be a hero and have columbus day and all. I like this book because it is educational and entertaining for the most part, starts out really fu...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

05/07/09

Lbsantini rated it:

This book is well written although the format is a bit tedious. Exploring events between Columbus's arrival and the Pilgrims' landing, Horowitz stops at various sites following the routes of Coronado, DeVaca, and DeSoto among others. While I was glad to have the bookends of 1492 and 1620 now filled, I found Horwitz' voyage a bit tiresome: drive into town, visit little known musuems, interview the locals and on to the next stop. And to be really nit-picky, I think the last two paragraphs needed t...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

03/15/09

Carrie rated it:

Read in March, 2009

I just finished, “A Voyage Long and Strange” by Tony Horwitz. It was about the founding of the New World from Vikings to Plymouth Rock. A few years ago a co-worker raved about one of his earlier works, “Confederates in the Attic” which I read and loved, so I was eager to get my hands on this one. Horwitz’s style is history meets travelogue. He’s able to dispel old myths that we have all grown up with, while conveying a sense of joy and wonder his discovery. He avoids writing th...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

12/30/08

Aimee rated it:

If you are interested in the history of the United States, but don't really want to get caught up in the inane name/date/place/event style that textbooks provide, pick up this book. The author provides an entertaining look at the many incursions of various Europeans into what would become the United States prior to the Pilgrims landing. Tracing their routes in modern day America, he looks for any sign of their influence that might remain in a witty and thoughtful way.

I really enjoy...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

01/21/09

Melissa rated it:

Read in December, 2008

Interesting, but I was a little put off by his constant assumption that Americans are so history illiterate. I remember learning a bit of this in high school, filled in by a few undergraduate history courses and independent reading. Regardless, I enjoyed reading more detail about the earlier explorations around America - particularly Coronado's. Would have loved to have seen the endless "sea of grasses" in west Texas that he described. The closest thing we have in north Texas is severa...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

12/15/08

Leanna rated it:

Read in January, 2009

recommends it for: amateur history fans

Basically, good fun and I would go on a road trip with Tony Horwitz in a heartbeat. My working theory is that Tony Horwitz's personality is his greatest strength as a writer - he's a great storyteller and manages to interest you in his own research into various periods of history (this book focuses on the pre-Pilgrim exploration of the Americas). This is quite a feat honestly, as I wouldn't think the research process usually inspires real page-turners. Although his focus here is not comprehen...more

Like this review? yes

2 comments