The Rediscovery of America

Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History (The Henry Roe Cloud Series on American Indians and Modernity)

By: Ned Blackhawk

Narrated by: Jason Grasl

Length: 17 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

The most enduring feature of US history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This long practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, with a new generation of scholars insists that any full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations. Indigenous history is essential to understanding the evolution of modern America.

Ned Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non-Native histories, from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late twentieth century. In this transformative synthesis he shows that: European colonization in the 1600s was never a predetermined success; Native nations helped shape England's crisis of empire; the first shots of the American Revolution were prompted by Indian affairs in the interior; California Indians targeted by federally funded militias were among the first casualties of the Civil War; the Union victory forever recalibrated Native communities across the West; and twentieth-century reservation activists refashioned American law and policy. Blackhawk's retelling of US history acknowledges the enduring power, agency, and survival of Indigenous peoples, yielding a truer account of the United States and revealing anew the varied meanings of America.

©2023 Ned Blackhawk (P)2024 Tantor

Interesting book marred by poor reading

This book is an interesting overview of the history of native and non-native interaction in the U.S. from 1492 to the present. For example it explains how early enslavement of indigenous peoples by European settlers established a pattern that paved the way for the slave trade in the U.S., and how native alliances with the British became one of the provoking causes of the American revolution. The book documents the shifting attitudes of the government towards Indian tribes, and the uncertainties surrounding their legal status under the Constitution and how it has evolved over time.

Unfortunately, the narrator of this book has a manner of delivery that is disconcerting and that undermines the narrative flow of the story. The narrator routinely emphasizes the wrong word in a phrase, and pauses within a sentence or between sentences, in ways that are distracting and make the book hard to follow.

Probably best used as a textbook

It’s loaded with factual information that most Americans have never learned.
No doubt that it would serve well as a textbook in a University level course.

That being said, the narrator is mechanical and non inspiring. It’s a dry listen. Not something that compels the listener to continue

Terrible reading/production

The reader sounds like a robot and the production of the audio book sounds pieced together, as if every third sentence was re-recorded. It’s incredibly distracting from what is otherwise a fascinating book. I switched to reading it in print.