by Tony Horwitz.

Henry Holt. 445 pages. $27.50.

By Mark Dunkelman
Special to the Journal

As a Civil War historian, I was late getting around to reading Tony Horwitz’s bestseller Confederates in the Attic. But when I finally immersed myself in that highly entertaining and absorbing exploration of the Civil War’s legacy in the modern-day South, Horwitz captured me as surely and as easily as any Johnny Reb collared a Billy Yank (or vice versa) during the Late Unpleasantness.

So a few years later, when Horwitz published a new book titled Blue Latitudes, I was quick to read and enjoy that evocation of the voyages of Captain James Cook and their memory in the South Pacific.

Now Horwitz has done it again with A Voyage Long and Strange, his look at the early European explorations of North America. Like many of us, Horwitz’s knowledge of the subject was limited to the prevailing WASP mythos of the Plymouth Pilgrims and Thanksgiving and Jamestown’s Captain John Smith and Pocahontas. During a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, the former history major realized his ignorance of the century-plus stretching from Columbus’ voyage of 1492 to the Mayflower’s landing in 1620, and set out to educate himself.

For Horwitz, that meant total immersion — extensive reading to grasp the historical background, followed by a three-year trek to seek out important exploration sites and to weigh their significance to present-day America. Inviting us along for the ride, he treats us to a series of vicarious adventures: broiling in a Micmac sweat lodge in Newfoundland, prowling the bizarre Faro monument in Santo Domingo, riding herd with a buffalo rancher in Kansas, re-enacting as a conquistador in Florida, and crossing the Mississippi by canoe.

Along the way our good-natured guide offers succinct primers on the Viking, Spanish, French and — finally — English voyagers who crossed the Atlantic, established footholds on the American coast, and in some cases ranged astonishingly great distances inland. We learn, too, the results of the interactions of Ponce de Leon, Cabeza de Vaca, Coronado, Hernando de Soto and their armies with the native populations: near extinction of the Indians and a prelude to centuries of warfare against the tribes.

Horwitz has concocted a winning formula in his time-travel epics. He brings history to life with brio, he ponders its meanings with sensitivity, and he laments its general neglect with concern. By conveying our past so heartily, handsomely and winsomely, Tony Horwitz does America proud. VOYAGE LONG AND STRANGE: Rediscovering the New World,

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