So this major history buff I know lent me A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz after he told me how awesome it was. After he kept filling me in on details about my parents' country I realized, "Damn, I don't know a thing about DR." Not only that, but I don't know much about American history either. I'm thinking it has something to do with the fact that those classes were a total bore to me.Well the premise of the book is this: the author realizes that after years of schooling and even majoring in history, he doesnt have much knowlegdge of what happened between the year Columbus sailed the ocean blue and when the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. And the bit he does know, has been completely skewed and biased. So he tries to put the pieces together while traveling to those places mentioned in the history books. Starting with the Vikings and ending with the...well...I'm not there yet, but I'm guessing Europeans taking over America is in there somewhere.
So far I've concluded that Columbus was a bastard who set the coarse for the abuse inflicted on the Native Americans even though the man never set foot on what would later become U.S. soil.
So if you don't want to go through life being a total moron, pick this one up. He's actually really funny. Case in point: right now Horwitz has just arrived in Santo Domingo, Republica Dominicana (the first European city in the New World) and has just learned that ahorita, "when use in the D.R., means roughly, 'between now and never.'" So true.