Tony Horwitz Bücher

Als James Cook 1769 zur ersten seiner drei großen Reisen aufbrach, war die Erde gerade einmal zu zwei Dritteln kartiert. Zehn Jahre später hatte Cook nicht nur auf dem Wasserweg die Welt entschleiert, sondern auch umfangreiche kulturelle und wissenschaftliche Studien vorgenommen, die das neuzeitliche Bild der Erde entscheidend prägten. Zwar ist viel über Cooks Leistungen bekannt, doch verstellten die Fakten bisher den ungeschönten Blick auf diese außergewöhnliche Figur. Tony Horwitz lenkt die Aufmerksamkeit des Betrachters nicht nur auf die dunklen Seiten des großen Forschers, sondern auch auf die zum Teil entsetzlichen Konsequenzen, die dessen Entdeckungen für einfache Kulturen nach sich zogen.

Mit dem neugierigen Blick des Entdeckers, großem Humor und historischem Sachverstand schildert Pulitzer-Preisträger Tony Horwitz die Stationen einer einzigartigen Reise: Er beleuchtet das Schicksal der Ureinwohner Amerikas ebenso wie das der Eroberer und erzählt die Geschichten ihrer Nachfahren, denen er unterwegs begegnet. Er schlägt Brücken zwischen Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, Fakten und Legenden und wirft so ein völlig neues Licht auf den Kontinent, den wir seit so langer Zeit zu kennen glauben.

Captain James Cook's three epic journeys between 1768 and 1779 were the last great voyages of discovery. Sailing some 170,000 miles, Cook's ships reached every continent and every ocean, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, from Kamchatka to Java to Easter Island to the coast of Oregon. Before Cook set off, one third of the world's map remained, simply, blank. By the time he was done, there was little left to discover. Cook and his men were also among the first Europeans to encounter Pacific natives: hip-throbbing Tahitian dancers, New Zealand cannibals, Hawaiian surfers, Australian Aborigines sealed off from the rest of the world for thousands of years. Tony Horwitz vividly recounts these adventures, and revisits the lands and peoples Cook discovered to explore the captain's legacy in today's Pacific. Horwitz also has exotic and often comic adventures of his own, on land and at sea, including a stint as a working sailor aboard a replica of Cook's tall ship, the ENDEAVOUR.

This volume investigates the ties in the United States; South among citizens to the American Civil War that ended more than 130 years previously. The author reports on contemporary attitudes on the Civil War and how it is discussed and taught, as well as attitudes about race. Written in the form of dispatches posted at varying times, it recounts the author's Civil War explorations in the South. Some of his encounters are humerous, but many open a window into the tragic state of the US's chasmic divisions

"The author retraces Frederick Law Olmsted's journey across the American South in the 1850s, on the eve of the Civil War. Olmsted roamed eleven states and six thousand miles, and the New York Times published his dispatches about slavery and its defenders. More than 150 years later, Tony Horwitz followed Olmsted's route, and whenever possible his mode of transport--rail, riverboats, in the saddle--through Appalachia, down the Ohio and Mississippi, through Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, and across Texas to the Rio Grande, discovering and reporting on vestiges of what Olmsted called the Cotton Kingdom"-- Provided by publisher