![]() ) even dons conquistador gear, making the narrative surprisingly fun and funny, even as he spends a lot of time describing just how badly Columbus and subsequently the Spanish treated people. Means anyway, starting with the Vikings in A.D. ![]() Is a history-fueled, self-imposed mission of rediscovery, a travelogue that sets out to explore the surprisingly long list of explorers who discovered America, and what discovered “Forget all the others,” his bar mate says loudly. Three hundred years later, people push and shove to see it in summer tourist season, wearing T-shirts that say, “America’s Hometown.” Which eventually leads an overstimulated (historically speaking) Horwitz to come close to starting a fight in a Plymouth bar. In about 1741, a church elder in Plymouth, winging it, pointed out a boulder that is now more like a not-at-all-precious stone. The Pilgrims-who, Horwitz notes, were on a mission that was based less on freedom and the schoolbook history ideas the president of the United States typically mentions when he pardons a turkey at the White House and more on finding a cure for syphilis-may or may not have noticed it. ![]() As opposed to the Pilgrims, Tony Horwitz begins his journey at Plymouth Rock. ![]()
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