A Voyage Long and Strange | 
 enlarge | Creator: Tony Horwitz
Publisher: Random House Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $35.95
Buy New: $18.84
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Avg. Customer Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 194369
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Abridged
Number Of Items: 7
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.1
Dimensions (in): 5.8 x 5.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0739317237
Dewey Decimal Number: 970.01
EAN: 9781415943953
ASIN: 0739317237
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW
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Product Description
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, Moorish slaves, 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 Leon 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 The real American history July 1, 2008
Horwitz spends three years traveling to the sites of early explorers and settlers who were in the Americas 100 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock or PR was long considered the birthplace of America, Horwitz shows that other places, especially Florida, can easily claim the title.
 Excellent history - Excellent Read June 27, 2008
Tony Horwitz asks the very simple question - "What happened in North America between Columbus and the Pilgrims?" - a 128 year interlude that seems strangely ignored - and then searches out the answer. Along the way he also searches out where, why, and by whom it is still remembered. A very funny book as a bit of travel writing (think Bill Bryson) and slice of present day Americana, and a very solid primer on the explorations and settlement of North America before the Pilgrims came and claimed to be the first.
It's not quite as good as Horwitz's book "Confederates in the Attic" - but that book sets a very high bar indeed. (If you've never read it, read that one first.) But a solid and enjoyable effort all around.
 Not in my library June 26, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
The serious weakness in the book is first suggested in the grossly inaccurate colored map on the inside cover of the book. The map and text show Cabeza de Vaca's route as beginning in Texas (rather than Florida)and running through central Texas (rather than norther Mexico). Cabeza de Vaca's route has been extensively covered by well documented historical and archeological studies over the past thirty years with no one faintly suggesting the route identified by the author's map and narrative. The same comment is made regarding the map and narrative regarding the route of De Soto who spent more time west of the Mississippi than he spent east of the river, including the extensive one-year journey to the southwest to try to march overland to Mexico.I understand the interest in making the story and voyage long and strange, but this could have been accomplished within the context of well established academic studies that abound.
great light and at times funny look at "real" history of the U.S June 20, 2008
This book offers a look at what really took place from the Vikings to the Mayflower.
At times serious and other time humorous. well done and easy and too fast reading.
Great read, well written June 15, 2008
I greatly enjoyed this book. While being scholarly sound, it is easy reading. It is the kind of book a teacher of history should embrace.
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