The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk
The Rediscovery of America
Subtitle: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
Author: Ned Blackhawk
Genre: Nonfiction, History
Publish Date: October 2024
Read: July 2025
Favorite Quote: North America’s total population nearly halved from 1492 to 1776: from approximately 7 or 8 million to 4 million.
Synopsis: The colonization of the American continents is fraught with horrible things, and yet, because of those horrible things, history swept those atrocities under a rug to ignore and be ignored. Ned Blackhawk works to undo what colonizer history teaches to show the real history of the “new world” from Spanish, English, and French settlers alike. Starting in the fifteenth century, Blackhawk explores the native peoples who lived in the Americas and how colonizers effectively wiped them out, took over the infrastructure created by these cultures, and wrote them out of history.
Why does this book beguile? I read Jill Lepore’s These Truths a few years ago and appreciated the inclusion of native stories and cultures from the revolutionary era of the USA. Now, Blackhawk created (what I’m calling) a full college course on the real history of native peoples in the Americas and packed it into a book. It’s dense, well-resesarched, and heartbreaking. However, I believe the goal of the book is not to live in the past and lament what happened, but to look to the future and ensure this doesn’t happen again (spoiler alert - it does).
Bookshop.Org Link*: The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk
Amazon.com Link* The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk
If you’re interested in this, read*: These Truths by Jill Lepore - Bookshop.Org / Amazon.com
