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Book Summary and Reviews of The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk

The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk

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

  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • Published:
  • Apr 2023, 616 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A sweeping and overdue retelling of U.S. history that recognizes that Native Americans are essential to understanding the evolution of modern America.

The most enduring feature of U.S. 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;
  • twentieth-century reservation activists refashioned American law and policy.

Blackhawk's retelling of U.S. 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.

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Book Awards

  • award image National Book Awards, 2023

Reviews

Media Reviews

"[A] sweeping study...Striking a masterful balance between the big picture and crystal-clear snapshots of key people and events, this is a vital new understanding of American history." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A wide-ranging study that moves Indigenous peoples from the periphery to the core of continental history...A well-reasoned challenge for future American historians to keep Native peoples on center stage." —Kirkus Reviews

"On his search to rediscover America, Blackhawk brilliantly rewrites U.S. history, illustrating that it cannot be told absent American Indians. This is the history text we have been waiting for." —Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

"Richly told and deeply informed, The Rediscovery of America demonstrates the centrality of Indigenous Americans to U.S. history. Blackhawk shows that at every turn the enduring relations between natives and newcomers have shaped the course of the American republic." —Claudio Saunt, author of Unworthy Republic

This information about The Rediscovery of America was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Ned Blackhawk

Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone) is the Howard R. Lamar Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University, where he is the faculty coordinator for the Yale Group for the Study of Native America. He is the author of Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West. He lives in New Haven, CT.

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