Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World
    Unavailable
    A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World
    Unavailable
    A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World
    Audiobook17 hours

    A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World

    Written by Tony Horwitz

    Narrated by John H. Mayer

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Read the ebook instead

    About this audiobook

    On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz makes an unsettling discovery. A history buff since early childhood, expensively educated at university-a history major, no less!-he's reached middle age with a third-grader's grasp of early America. In fact, he's mislaid more than a century of American history, the period separating Columbus's landing in 1492 from the arrival of English colonists at Jamestown in 160-something. Did nothing happen in between?

    Horwitz decides to find out, and in A Voyage Long and Strange he uncovers the neglected story of America's founding by Europeans. He begins a thousand years ago, with the Vikings, and then tells the dramatic tale of conquistadors, castaways, French voyageurs, and many others who roamed and rampaged across half the states of the present-day U.S. continent, long before the Mayflower landed.

    To explore this history and its legacy in the present, Horwitz embarks on an epic quest of his own-trekking in search of grape-rich Vinland, Ponce de León's Fountain of Youth, Coronado's Cities of Gold, Walter Raleigh's Lost Colonists, and other mysteries of early America. And everywhere he goes, Horwitz probes the revealing gap between fact and legend, between what we enshrine and what we forget.

    An irresistible blend of history, myth, and misadventure, A Voyage Long and Strange allows us to rediscover the New World for ourselves.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 29, 2008
    ISBN9781415943960
    Author

    Tony Horwitz

    Tony Horwitz is a native of Washington, D.C., and a graduate of Brown University and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. He worked for many years as a reporter, first in Indiana and then during a decade overseas in Australia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, mostly covering wars and conflicts as a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. After returning to the States, he won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting and worked as a staff writer for The New Yorker before becoming a full-time author. His books include Midnight Rising, A Voyage Long and Strange, Blue Latitudes, a national and New York Times bestseller about the Pacific voyages of Captain James Cook, Baghdad Without a Map, a national bestseller about the Middle East, and Confederates in the Attic, a national and New York Times bestseller about the Civil War. Horwitz has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and a visiting scholar at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. He lives with his wife, Geraldine Brooks, and their son, Nathaniel, on the island of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.

    Related to A Voyage Long and Strange

    Related audiobooks

    Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies) History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Men Without Country

      Jun 1, 2022

      Men Without Country
      4 min read

    • Article

      Going With The Flow

      Sep 29, 2022

      A History of Water by Edward Wilson-Lee William Collins, 352 pages, £25 This is a wonderfully entertaining and intelligent account of two loosely connected lives that, like streams, meander until they converge to form something larger. Both were 16th

      1 min read

    • Article

      Culture Shock

      Mar 1, 2023

      In his essay “Of Cannibals” (c. 1580), Montaigne talks of meeting, in Rouen in 1562, three indigenous men from Tupinambá, Brazil. They had been brought to entertain King Charles IX, who at the time was just 12 years old. Traveling through Europe, the

      5 min read

    • Article

      Brave New World The Compelling Story Of Abducted 16th-century Indigenous Americans Who Discovered Europe

      Jan 27, 2023

      Like other historians writing about the age of encounter and conquest that swept across the Americas from the late 15th century, Caroline Dodds Pennock begins her new book with an account of a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. What is different is th

      2 min read

    • Article

      'Sea People' Examines The Origins And History Of Polynesia

      Mar 13, 2019

      Christina Thompson deftly weaves her fascinating narrative of European travels and attempts to understand the Polynesian puzzle in her new book, though European colonization is not fully addressed.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Sins Of The Father

      Apr 16, 2020

      Four years ago, the BBC aired a deeply disturbing documentary called My Nazi  Legacy. It followed the journey of Horst Wächter, the son of notorious Nazi leader Otto Wächter, as he visited the places in eastern Europe where his father had presided ov

      4 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Mar 16, 2023

      Sam Willis's entertaining article about Charles Johnson's scandalous works popularising robbers, pirates and highwaymen (Murder and Mayhem in Georgian Britain, March) reignites a long controversy about the true identity of the author. Although the so

      4 min read

    • Article

      Encounters

      Nov 24, 2022

      Encounters
      3 min read

    • Article

      Who Were The Black Tudors?

      Oct 8, 2020

      Who Were The Black Tudors?
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Age Of Transformation

      Jan 19, 2023

      The Age Of Transformation
      9 min read

    • Article

      Storied Narrative’s Translation Prompts A Fresh Look At The Slave Trade

      Dec 1, 2020

      Venture Smith’s slave narrative has been translated into Fante, inviting further reckoning about Ghana’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.

      4 min read

    • Article

      TV, FILM & RADIO

      Aug 6, 2020

      TV, FILM & RADIO
      5 min read

    • Article

      Pasó Por Aquí

      May 21, 2019

      Pasó Por Aquí
      5 min read

    • Article

      Along Rivers and Through Prairies

      Oct 1, 2023

      Before Dr. Robert Moore (RIGHT) became an educator at Washington University in St. Louis, he was a historian who worked for the National Park Service for 40 years. He enjoys doing historical research and using architectural drawing programs to create

      5 min read

    • Article

      This Issue’s Contributors

      Jul 9, 2020

      Nero’s literary afterlife is unlike that of any other emperor. From being vilified as an Antichrist by early Christians to being idolised as a supreme decadent in the 19th century, he has horrified, delighted and electrified audiences for centuries.

      1 min read

    • Article

      Indians and Aliens

      Jun 19, 2020

      Indians and Aliens
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Dawn Of Globalisation

      Aug 6, 2020

      The Dawn Of Globalisation
      2 min read

    • Article

      How Has Migration Changed The World?

      Jul 16, 2020

      How Has Migration Changed The World?
      10 min read

    • Article

      To Move Is To Live, To Live Is To Move

      Apr 8, 2023

      What is the common thread uniting the Neanderthals, Turkish guest workers, Christopher Columbus and the Trojan prince Aeneas? They were all migrants. The Neanderthals moved around seasonally, guest workers travelled from Turkey to Germany for work in

      1 min read

    • Article

      Agenda

      Apr 23, 2020

      Agenda
      2 min read

    • Article

      More From Us

      Dec 23, 2020

      More From Us
      1 min read

    • Article

      The History Of The Nation State

      Feb 27, 2020

      The History Of The Nation State
      8 min read

    • Article

      Britain’s Black Trailblazers

      Oct 1, 2020

      Britain’s Black Trailblazers
      14 min read

    • Article

      Welcome

      Sep 3, 2020

      “We know how the story ends. Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife, was executed in May 1536, having been tried and sentenced to death for committing high treason. But at the time, none of this was certain. No queen of England had been executed befor

      1 min read

    Reviews for A Voyage Long and Strange

    4/5

    343 ratings41 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      The settlement of North America by Europeans did not begin with the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. A whole lot of exploration and settlement took place before that, and all this is the subject of a fascinating book by Tony Horwitz, “A Voyage Long and Strange” (2008).Americans make a big deal about the Pilgrims, but Horwitz wanted to know about those explorers and settlers who came before. He wanted to, as much as possible centuries later, walk in their footsteps and see what they saw.It is not a pretty picture, which may be why most Americans, including most American history teachers, choose to ignore it, or at least gloss over it. By 21st century standards, these were not nice people. They lusted after gold. They robbed, raped, enslaved and massacred the native people they encountered. They didn't even behave kindly toward their own people, as in the case of the Roanoke settlers who were abandoned.Horwitz begins with the Vikings, who explored and founded short-lived settlements in the northeastern regions of the continent around the year 1000, then turns to Christopher Columbus, who succeeded "because he was so stubbornly wrong." He died believing he had found a new route to India. After that Horwitz examines such explorers at DeLeon and DeSoto and the settlements in St. Augustine and Jamestown.But Horwitz looks not just at the past but also at the present. He travels to places that may (or in some cases may not) have been visited by these people, looks for remnants of their time there and talks with both scholars and people who now live in these areas to get their take on the past. Much of this is written in the manner of Bill Bryson, full of information presented in a wry and whimsical way.As important as history may be, Horwitz concludes by stating that myth may be more important. It feels good to ignore a "monstrous man" like DeSoto and failed settlements where so many people died and focus instead on myths about Pilgrims. (They weren't called Pilgrims until many years later, they had a feast but didn't make a big deal out of it, the Indians were uninvited guests, they probably ate venison and fish but not turkey, etc.) As journalists like to say in jest, why let the facts get in the way of a good story?
    • 4/5
      Like most US citizens my age, I was taught a rather vague history of our country in which Columbus proved that the world wasn't flat by discovering America, which, after an inexplicable gap of some 130 years, was settled by pilgrims on a quest for religious freedom. I suppose it is because we are so young when we are taught this, and because it is repeated ad nauseam throughout our lives, that we never question this rather bizarre narrative.In a book that is part travelogue , part history, and part social commentary on our modern relationship with that history, Tony Horwitz examines the European explorations which preceded Columbus and continues up to the arrival of the pilgrims. He tells not the story we are most commonly told of an unending series of back-to-back successes by brave explorers, but rather the fuller and more accurate story of invaders who suffered many losses before they finally conquered an already occupied land. In the process, he corrects many of the most enduring yet fallacious myths regarding the occupation of the "new world" and gives us in exchange a more honest history and a richer understanding of who we are today.
    • 5/5
      I thought the conclusion of the book made a profound point--profound to me anyway. I had thought of the book as a more entertaining approach to the same type of material I had read in Mann's 1491 and 1493, but there aren't strong similarities. I found all three of the books mentioned very rewarding.
    • 4/5
      Excellent details on the early explorers and settlers in America. Very interesting and I recommend this.
    • 4/5
      Since I am a fan of Horwitz's wife, Geraldine Brooks, I thought I'd pick up this work of historical investigative journalism from her husband. Traveling with him to discover the history of North America before and until the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, was a treat.

      This is not a romanticized version of what happened. He takes pains to interview not only historians but ancestors of the Native Americans whose heritage was completely upended as well. At times it was funny, his description of his experiences in a Micmac sweatlodge had me laughing. Things he found out about Hernando de Soto made me furious. But no matter where he was in the Carribean or the United States, and no matter whose historical record he was examining, I was fascinated. The pages turned themselves.

      This is not really a feel-good story for any of us. But Horwitz did his best to find the truth of what happened. The result is a satisfying read.
    • 4/5
      I found this book to be very enjoyable. I read this book as extra credit for one of my classes but liked it nonetheless. I really love learning about history but some academic history books can be very dry and boring to read so I like history books like this where it was written for a broad audience. There was a lot of stuff in this book I didn't know but also lots and lots of facts that I did know. This is probably partially because I'm in an American history class right now but some things that the author discovered where he was like "this is so cool I had no idea this happened!" I already knew about it and it was less exciting. I would say definitely pick up this book if you are interested in learning more about who the earliest settlers of America were, where the went, what they did, and how they affected the native peoples. Very informative and I pretty interesting read.
    • 4/5
      This is a really fun and informative book. Horwitz realizes on a chance trip to Plymouth rock that he knows next to nothing about the many people who visited and settled in America before the Pilgrims. To remedy this, he goes on a journey around the Americas, retracing the steps of the first European explorers to the Americas. The reader hears about the Vikings, Columbus, conquistadors like Coronado and De Soto, the Roanoke settlers, and information on the Native Americans they displaced. Horwitz includes lots of interviews with current historians and avid amateur "historians", many of whom are just plain crazy. This is a fun mix of history, travel memoir, and people who are way too into their ancestry. Fun read and you'll probably learn something new too.
    • 3/5
      An interesting and practically unknown history of early American exploration that begins with Vikings and ends with landing of the Pilgrims. This is the history that modern Americans have chosen to forget. It becomes clear as the book unfolds that much of popular history is just myth-making and carefully massaged facts. Americans have chosen to remember what most appeals to them and discard, sometimes vehemently, anything and everything else.
    • 3/5
      I liked this one, my student did not. I think the author has a sort of Bill Bryson tone. It might be better utilized as an audiobook.
    • 4/5
      When the author realized he didn't really know anything about European history in America between Columbus and Jamestown, he decided to go looking. I had a similar hole in my education, so it was fun to join him on the journey. From the Vikings through Columbus, the Conquistadors, the French, and the early English, this book covers a whole lot of events rarely discussed in elementary school. There is, of course, a whole lot of barging in on native people and slaughtering them wholesale, but it's not all dark. In fact, some of it is quite pleasant, and there's even a fair bit of humor. Recommended.
    • 3/5
      65. A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World (audio book) by Tony Horwitz (who also narrated), (2008, 464 pages in paper from, Listened Dec 2-10)My latest audio. It was only OK. A great idea that somehow wasn't as entertaining as it should have been.Horwitz covers the pre-Pilgrim history of North America exploration, while interviewing serious historian, reenactors, oddballs obsessers, etc. It should be a fun mixture of historical trivia and entertaining interviews. He covers the Vikings, Columbus, Ponce de Leon, Coronado, de Soto, Roanoke Island, Jamestown and finally Plymouth. I didn't know de Soto reached the Savannah river, or that his brief visit marks the end of Indian civilization through that region.But I never fully enjoyed the book. First of all Horwitz reads somehow wrong. He sounds like he is reading prose, or maybe like a reporter reading shocking news while trying to maintain impartiality. Anyway, I thought the tone was dour. Also the structure doesn't fully work. The history-to-interview-to-history-to-next-topic seems to abbreviate everything and drag it out at the same time. It got old, and by the end I was getting impatient for it finish.
    • 4/5
      While American history doesn't interest me as much as other areas, I found much to interest me in this engagingly written book. If nothing else, I found out that a tool to dig out solid stools in the heavily constipated has a name.I will be including other titles by Mr Horwitz on my to-read list and for me that is the highest accolade I can give to a writer.
    • 4/5
      Very interesting account of tvarious european groups that came and went in the America's. Horowitz goes from place telling stories of vikings, conquistadors, french and english in a dramatic, sometimes sad (he doesn't hide massacres against the Indians) and always interesting way.
    • 4/5
      This was an interesting ramble through early European ventures into North America, with an occasionally whiny tour guide.
    • 4/5
      Staggered by his lack of knowledge about the discovery of America, Horwitz travels around and interviews scholars, historians, and ordinary people about the Vikings, Columbus, the Conquistadors, the Native Americans, and the Pilgrims, trying to separate myth from history. Easy to read and informative as well as hilariously funny.
    • 4/5
      Everything I have read by Tony Horwitz so far has been extremely enjoyable. This is the book that turned me on to his storytelling abilities
    • 4/5
      Another Horowitz travelogue/history, this time tracing the roots of North American advancement across the continent. He visits archaeological and modern sites as he relates the tales of these European expeditions that explored, mapped, and sometimes settled on a new and exciting continent in the 16th century from discovery in 1492( or earlier) to permanent settlement in 1606.
    • 4/5
      I really like books that teach without making me feel like I'm reading a textbook, and this book did that very well. The author traveled around to explore the various scenes where explorers set foot in America, from the time of the Vikings in 1000 AD, to Columbus, on up to Jamestown and the Pilgrims. This is a great book if you like history and don't know much about what happened in America before the Pilgrims. Although it mostly focuses on European history in America, there is also a great deal of information about Native Americans and their encounters.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Sometimes plodding, Horwitz always has enough sideline material to keep things interesting. Careful historian.
    • 4/5
      Did Columbus redally discover the New world? Did the pilgrims really step ashore at Plymouth Rock to found the first permanent colony in what would become the United States? Was Ponce de Leon really searching for the fountain of youth? These are lessons that are learned by every American schoolchild, and are an integral part of the fabric of the American national identity and culture - but, are they true?Horwitz set out to discover, as much as possible, the truth about the discovery and colonization of the New World, with almost all of the emphasis on North America, and in particular, the United States.I found this book interesting and engaging. To use a cliché that's been beaten to death, Horwitz makes history come alive. He interviewed many interesting people, and explored many landmarks and relics. This book brought home to me how many versions there are of the same historic event, and that many times, it's the small, uncelebrated events that have the greatest impact on the developement of history.
    • 5/5
      Another excellent book by Tony Horwitz, with a mixture of little known history, a personal search for existing evidence and landmarks related to early exploration of America, and subtle humor as he engages other Americans and their views of the early explorers.
    • 5/5
      Tony Horwitz, while visiting the Plymouth Rock, wondered why so many people were interested in looking at an old cracked rock. Why was the story of the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving so important to Americans when other people visited and colonized America before them? Another question, why is Columbus considered to be the one who discovered America when he actually landed in what is now the Dominican Republic thinking he was in the India? Horwitz travels from an archeological investigation of a Norse colony in New Foundland, down to the Caribbean, through the American Southwest, across to Florida, up to Virginia and then back to Plymouth looking for the truth behind the discovery and colonizing of America.This book mixes in depth historical research with investigative journalism. Horwitz provides the reader with historical background and then relates his travels. He observes his surroundings and interviews people living there. His interviews are usually with park rangers, local historians, tourists, reinactors, or members of historical organizations.Horwitz writing style is both thoughtful and humorous. Racism crops up in some of the places he visits. In the Dominican Republic it's better to be of Spanish descent than Indian or black. In Virginia, many people claiming to be a descendant of Pocahontas are actually a mix of white, indian, and black. He talks with a member of an organization of whites who have been asked by Native Americans not to dress in Native American garb in public. He also relates his exasperating adventures traveling around the DR where mentioning Columbus is considered a jinx. At a ceremony he is pulled away from seeing the possible remains of Columbus by a group of bureaucrats. When sorting through all the myths and facts what is more important to people, historical truths or what they preserve to be the truth? In the end, people believe in what they are comfortable with and that is that the nation was founded by pious, hardworking Puritans.
    • 4/5
      The Fountain of Youth, John Smith and Pocahontas, the First Thanksgiving -- they're all subjects of Tony Horwitz's peppery debunking of myths of American history. The investigative journalist tells us what REALLY happened after Christopher Columbus "discovered" America in 1492. The book is part history and part travelogue. Most of the stories are on the violent and/or bloodthirsty side-- and some of our "heroes" are certainly not people to emulate.
    • 5/5
      I paid attention in history class. Either I missed the significance of most of the content Tony Horwitz covers in this book, or it simply wasn't included in my textbooks. Horwitz looks at European contact with the New World of North America preceding the Mayflower's arrival at Plymouth. From this perspective, the settlement at Plymouth marked the end of an era rather than a beginning.The biggest surprises for me involved Spanish expeditions in what is now the United States. I had no idea that Spanish conquistadors traveled outside of the southwestern states, Florida, and the Gulf Coast. It was a revelation to learn that Coronado's route took him into the heart of Kansas. It was an even bigger revelation to learn that De Soto's route went right through my home territory of East Tennessee. Yes, I knew he had discovered the Mississippi River, but I had formed an erroneous impression that he discovered it by navigating up from the Gulf, not that he came across it during an overland journey that began in Florida.One of my favorite sections of the book is the note on sources and the 12-page bibliography. Chapter by chapter, Horwitz points the reader to primary sources available for that chapter's topic (often a translated and published diary, journal, or log) and to the best of the secondary sources on that topic. I added at least a dozen items to my TBR list -- some to buy and some to borrow from the library. At the top of the list are books about De Soto's journey that took him through East Tennessee.Recommended to readers looking for an overview of European exploration and discovery of North America. Readers of travel literature will enjoy reading about Horwitz's experiences as he followed the routes of these early explorers.
    • 4/5
      The Fountain of Youth, John Smith and Pocahontas, the First Thanksgiving -- they're all subjects of Tony Horwitz's peppery debunking of myths of American history. The investigative journalist tells us what REALLY happened after (and even before) Christopher Columbus "discovered" America in 1492 and before 1620, when the Pilgrims stepped out of their ships onto Plymouth Rock. The book is part history and part travelogue -- and the author is just the person to take us along for the ride. Most of the stories are on the violent and/or bloodthirsty side-- and some of our "heroes" are certainly not people to emulate. Finding traces of earlier civilizations isn't always easy (and there usually aren't Marriott hotels on the roads the author travels), but the places he visits and the people he meets are endlessly fascinating. As usual, Tony Horwitz delivers!
    • 4/5
      I loved Blue Latitudes and Confederates in the Attic. So much so that I made two different book clubs read them. I was a little disappointed in this book though. Not sure why. It has many of the same elements as the other two books...humor, history, travelogue...but it just didn't feel as cohesive as the others. Like maybe there was too much story for a single book. I'm not exactly sure. It's been a while since I read it, so I'm going on my memory, which hasn't been too reliable of late.Ah, found my old review, so here it is too, just to compare with my current recollection:Just finished this newest Tony Horwitz book last night. Horwitz is one of my favorite non-fiction writers, especially when he's writing about history. In this book, he visited Plymouth Rock and then got to thinking about all those Europeans who got to America before the Pilgrims did. And then he researched 10 of them and presented their stories in this book. Like all of Horwitz's work, it's fascinating and witty. But this one felt dense too. It may just be that I've been distracted a lot by life lately, but it took me a long time to get through this one. I always wanted to get back to it, just couldn't seem to find the time or energy. I'd still recommend it though. And I really liked what Horwitz had to say about myth vs. fact at the end of the book. Those few pages were worth the whole read.
    • 5/5
      Best book I read in the last year! Great book to read if you're interested in American history. Hilarious and sad incidents on little known American history. Who would have thought that our forefathers were sometime cannibals in desperate times?