⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Really liked it, stuck with me & would recommend

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.

Wow, this is thorough and well researched! It's very dense and does read like more of a class textbook, but I really appreciated how the Native and non-Native histories are coalesced together to enlighten how we got to today. The cold hard facts that the Europeans did all they could to trick, steal, massacre, and debase the Native peoples through the guise of religion and superiority is well explained and documented over and over and over again. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in history, especially of the Americas.

The narrator, Jason Grasl, did a fantastic job. I had no trouble understanding what was happening.

Thank you to Tantor Audio, NetGalley, and author Ned Blackhawk for providing me with a digital ARC copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review. The Rediscovery of America is out February 27, 2024.

I'm not a scholar of American history and apart from the big events I know little about it. However indigenous peoples and their plight in whatever country has always interested me so I hoped this tome might shed some light.

It certainly did that. I had to listen to it in increasingly shorter gobbets because as time goes on and (for some reason) I expected the lives of the Native Americans to improve and even though the mass slaughter had gone the actual rights of the people got worse.

I can't count how many treaties were signed, broken, manipulated and revised unilaterally. Then there was the Termination policy which seemed like a good idea but was only designed to do the US government good.

The whole of this book made me feel somewhat sick. I knew that many Natives had lost their lives but the total approximate figure of 56 million floored me.

I am British. We have a long and disgusting history of subjugation and genocide all over the world but it seems that in the US everyone wanted rid of the people whose land they'd stolen. Once the British were gone this was all on the emigrants.

After that the government tried to assimilate - destroying Natives way of life, families and dignity. Termination just about finished off the indigenous peoples but thankfully a reversal has begun in more recent years.

So it's true to say that this is a very uncomfortable read. However it is thoroughly researched, detailed, interesting and I'd highly recommend it.

I listened to the audio version which was read clearly by Jason Grasl but I'd like the print version to read again.

Thanks to Netgalley and RB Media for the advance review audio copy.

This book was 100% not what I expected. And that's no bad thing! For some reason I assumed this would all be about what atrocities had been acted against the Indigenous peoples by the colonisers. That is not this book. This book is quite simply a history of the United States of America, starting from the Spanish colonisation and moving up to Bush's administration, with a focus on how all these nationwide and global events impacted Indigenous communities.

I did struggle a little bit in some sections where what I'm assuming is "standard" American history knowledge was assumed. This is very much written for a US audience and as a European I was quite lost when mentioning certain battles or Presidents. Not a fault of the book in the slightest, just something to be aware of if you're not American.

The audiobook itself wasn't a great experience for me. The book is narrated by Jason Grasl, and I genuinely thought that he was an AI generated voice at points. But given this is a non-fiction historical book, I was here for the facts and so this didn't take too much away from the experience.

This book is one I'd consider a fantastic addition to any library. Written by a member of the Indigenous community themselves (the author is from the Te-Moak tribe), it is so important that history that isn't only from the white coloniser lens is retained and recorded. Overall, this was a fascinating read and one I'm very glad to have had the privilege to listen to.

Winner of the National Book Award, Ned Blackhawk's The Rediscovery of America, has been widely acclaimed since its release last year and is well deserved in my opinion. This is a hefty volume that rewrites U.S. history focusing on indigenous voices rather than the Eurocentric version that has been the "standard" historically.

Blackhawk spends the majority of the book on the history before Andrew Jackson, which is where I found the biggest fault. Much of the history before the Revolutionary War felt very familiar and didn't seem like it was bringing much "new" to the table. Then when it finally felt like Blackhawk was getting to the meat of his argument, he started zooming through decades of history. In all, it made the pacing incredibly uneven. That being said, there are chapters/examples that I will absolutely be referencing again and using as jumping off points to learn more. I do wish that this book had gone up to present day, though understand the difficulties that might involve, especially when publishing such extensive work through a university press.

I received an ALC from NetGalley, read by Jason Grasl, who did a good job though I wish I had had a physical version to read in conjunction with the audio as I think it would have helped me retain more of the information, and visualize in cases of maps, etc. So if you, like me, prefer to listen to nonfiction I recommend picking up this audiobook but maybe also check out a physical or ebook version to follow along!

This was a fascinating nonfiction read that had me hooked and flying through. There is so much info covered in The Rediscovery of America, yet it doesn't feel dense or dry like most history books can easily fall into. I appreciated how thorough this book was in covering stories of different tribes and nations across the so-called US and Canada — although, I wish the narratives and history of Indigenous peoples of Mesomerica had some representation in here since our stories are often overlooked in Indigeneity and Indigenous history, as if we aren't a part of the Americas and weren't impacted by colonialism. I also wish the narrative came closer to current day to include some of the major organizing and events of Indigenous history that are still currently unfolding as a culmination of the centuries of colonialism Blackhawk outlines and shares through the work.

This book taught me so much about the history of Native Americans and the way their people and cultures were utterly devastated by the European colonizers. It is very detailed and extremely interesting. However, I found that listening to the audiobook felt overwhelming because it was difficult to process all the information. I found myself referring to the ebook regularly to reread parts. Another thing that made listening difficult was the narration. Repeatedly, especially during the first half, I could easily determine spots where the narration had been edited. It sounded really disjointed, and that became very distracting.
In sum, I highly recommend this book for the information it contains, but I suggest reading it yourself rather than listening.

Thank you NetGalley, Tantor Audio, and Take University Press for allowing me early access to the ARC audiobook and ebook editions of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Blackhawk takes on the classical history of the US through the same lens as those scholars, but makes the compelling case for the importance of Indigenous impact on history from the first interactions with the Spanish to the modern day. This is a scholarly work, and as such lacks some of the passion found in more contemporary works that are attempting to disrupt systems.

Excellently researched and defined this is a compelling work that will add depth to everyone’s understanding of US History. I would not use this book as a stand alone, but would pair it with other works including Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous People’s History of the United States and Treuer’s The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native American History from 1890 to the Present.

The Rediscovery of America is a wealth of information about the indigenous people of North America. This reads like a textbook, in that it is pretty dry with a lot of dates and events, and little narrative. Despite its dense material, there is so much to learn from professor Ned Blackhawk. I especially loved the story about Lucia Martinez, an Indian captive, that fought to regain parental rights of her children.

Learning about the atrocities committed against Native Peoples and the fight that they have pursued to avoid assimilation was very powerful. I knew Native Peoples were treated horribly, but did not realize the extent of it, especially in regard to tearing children from their parents. This history is important. There is so much to learn from these events.

Jason Grasl does a great job narrating this audiobook.

Thank you to Tantor Audio, RB Media, and NetGalley for an ALC of this audiobook!

Rating: 4⭐
Narration: 4⭐

This book documents the history of North America (U.S, and Canada) but through the aspect of indigenous tribes, giving us a richer view of our history. This was a difficult read mainly because there is so much information shared. It is not a book you can binge but processed over time. It can often read like a textbook, where some parts are smooth and in others bogged down by a ton of analysis. The author is a professor of history at Yale from my understanding, which will help you understand why it was written in the way it has. If you're wanting to have a deeper knowledge of our history, then I recommend this book, There are so many untold stories that are necessary to know in this book.

The narration is by Jason Grasl, who I've found through research, is an Indigenous American actor, which was important to me. Overall, I give the book 4 stars for information, 3.5 stars for delivery (I believe the information would more received by the general public, if it wasn't so academically writtten), 4 stars for narration.

I have over 500 notes and bookmarks from this book. It is packed with fantastic information—lots of information that will make you angry about the settler colony commonly known as the United States. We need to learn history from a non-white man’s point of view, and this book does a fantastic job doing that. “A full telling of American history must account for the dynamics of struggle, survival, and resurgence that frame America’s Indigenous past.” Ned Blackhawk covers history from first European contact to modern times and indigenous histories from Mexico to Canada to the Atlantic to the Pacific. Including the Kumeyaay…I grew up in Alpine, where the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay reservation is.

Some of the horrors we study in modern history/ current affairs are tactics learned by the colonizers who settled in North America. A friendly reminder…a treaty with the US means nothing; Congress can override it, and they have a history of doing that.

“Warfare, disease, and starvation accompanied U.S. expansion.”

Thank you, NetGalley and Tantor Audio, for a copy of the audiobook.

Too often in the past, Indigenous people were relegated to the margins of US history, In The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of US History, Indigenous author and professor Ned Blackhawk sets out to rectify this by showing that, from the beginning of American history, starting from the Spanish colonialism to the end of the 20th century, Indigenous peoples played an essential role in the success of the US although rarely to their benefit. He outlines how the violence, the diseases, the enslavement, and the dispossession of Native Americans across five centuries shaped America, how the success of British colonization and European settlement depended on the dispossession of the Native Americans, their role in the American Revolution and the Civil War as well as in the shaping of US laws, how much of American history was predicated on attempted destruction of their way of life, their culture, and, even their very existence, and how, despite every effort to erase them, they survived and continued to influence American history.

I cannot say this was an easy read albeit a very interesting one. Despite Blackhawk’s straightforward even, at times, dry writing style, it is hard not to be made, at the very least, uncomfortable by the cruelties and injustices inflicted on Indigenous peoples throughout the five centuries of American (and Canadian) colonialism right to the end of the 20th century. But it is an important one giving a different side of history that few of us learned in school but one we should have learned. I listened to the audiobook version narrated by Jason Grasl who does an excellent job.

I received an audio version of this book from Netgalley and Tantor Audio in exchange for an honest review

This book is a book that NEEDS to be read. It isn't the easiest book to get through -- the subject matter is devastating at times. But it NEEDS to be read just like it needed to be written.

The injustices done to Native people in North America is absolutely appalling, and while most people "know" about it in the abstract, I don't think many people really care to know more. But they SHOULD know more.

I can't even provide a proper review for the book because it touched me too deeply to put into words. I hate that America was built on the suffering of others -- and while a HUGE part of that suffering came from enslaved African Americans, the Native population was also hit harder than anyone would realize.

This isn't a fun book to read. It isn't a happy book. It isn't a book you're likely to "enjoy." But you should read it anyway.