Why did I love this book?
I grew up near Seneca land in western New York and have always felt we’re only told half the story of European and then United States interactions with Native Americans. This book tells the missing half.
It’s certainly not the only history written from the Indian point of view, but it is the most rigorous I have come across; Blackhawk is a Yale historian and has won the Turner Award, the top distinction among professional historians.
This book is not balanced but does not claim to be, it recounts the sins of Europeans, and (post-1789) Americans against Indians, including sins by the Spanish and the French before English speakers took charge.
I hope Blackhawk’s next book assesses Native American life today.
1 author picked The Rediscovery of America as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
A sweeping and overdue retelling of U.S. history that recognizes that Native Americans are essential to understanding the evolution of modern America
* Longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award in Nonfiction
* A National Bestseller
"Eloquent and comprehensive. . . . In the book's sweeping synthesis, standard flashpoints of U.S. history take on new meaning."-Kathleen DuVal, Wall Street Journal
"In accounts of American history, Indigenous peoples are often treated as largely incidental-either obstacles to be overcome or part of a narrative separate from the arc of nation-building. Blackhawk . . . [shows] that Native communities have, instead, been inseparable…