Tony Horwitz's A Voyage Long And Strange

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In writing A Voyage Long and Strange, Tony Horwitz’s goal is clear, to educate others on early America and debunk ignorant myths. Horwitz’s reason for wanting to achieve this goal is because of his own ignorance that he sees while at Plymouth Rock. “Expensively educated at a private school and university- a history major, no less!-I’d matriculated to middle age with a third grader’s grasp of early America.” Horwitz is disappointed in his own lack of knowledge of his home country, especially with his background history and decides not only to research America’s true beginnings, but to also follow the path of those who originally yearned to discover America. In order to educate himself, as well as write his book to educate people like himself, …show more content…

Historiography is used in order to classify written works of historical content. There are five unique schools of historiography, each with its own criteria and qualities. The schools are used in order to better understand a written material by categorizing its content and the author’s approach to writing. Classifying a school can also be helpful in examining the writings strengths and weaknesses. Though nationalist historiography usually includes writings from the 1800-1900, and A Voyage Long and Strange, was written in 2008, the main themes of the school still apply to the …show more content…

As the goal of the writer was to educate, the book achieved success in both ways as the reader is left much more informed about early America than when they began reading the novel. The book covers the its main topics in three sections, Discovery, Conquest and Settlement. Each section includes information from various geographical regions in America with information pertaining to one of the specific sections above. Each section gave a comprehensive look at the main topic in a way that was easy to understand as well as