A Voyage Long and Strange

by Tony Horwitz

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Like the explorers in this book, I would have been lost without the local guides, translators, and intermediaries I met in the course of my travels. In addition to those mentioned in the text and source notes, I’d like to thank Alba Moquete Brown for her help in Santo Domingo and two generous and engaging Southerners: Billy Atkinson in Childersburg, Alabama, and DruAnna Overbay, who guided me through the Melungeon country of East Tennessee. I regret that I wasn’t able to include our adventures in this book. Also, while I’ve paid homage to Timothy Burke of Calderon’s Company in the text, he was a tremendous help with every aspect of my De Soto research. His group’s Web site is a rare and colorful repository of information about conquistadors, from dress to diet to dogs. It can be found at http://mywebpages.comcast.net/calderon.

  I wrote much of this book during a fellowship at the Radclif
fe Institute for Advanced Study, the most stimulating place I’ve ever had the pleasure to hang out at. Deep gratitude to the Institute’s then dean, Drew Gilpin Faust; to Judith Vichniac and the rest of the Radcliffe staff; and to my fellow fellows, who entertained and inspired me with their research and companionship. While at Harvard, I also had the great fortune to become the oldest student of Jill Lepore, who let me into her incomparable history writing seminar. She has enriched me ever since with her friendship, scholarship, and editorial pen.

  I finished this book during a semester-long sinecure at the John Carter Brown Library, the unparalleled archive of early Americana at Brown University. Thanks to the library’s staff, fellows, and director, Ted Widmer, a bohemian star in the constellation of American historians. Most of the images in this book are from the library’s exceptional collection. I’m also grateful for my long-ago professor at Brown, Philip Benedict, who taught me early European history a quarter-century ago and tutored me all over again for this project, from his new perch at the Institut d’histoire de la Reformation, in Geneva.

  The saints who read this book while it was still a work-in-chaos include my mother, Elinor Horwitz, and brother, Josh Horwitz; Maria Wherley, teacher and coon-skinner of Spruce Creek, PA.; and Victoria Sprow, who also helped with translation and Widener-diving. Thanks as well to my writer pals—Joel Achenbach, Jack Hitt, Michael Lewis, Bill Powers, Martha Sherrill—for their friendship, editorial advice, and title caucusing.

  I am, once again, indebted beyond measure to my super-agent Kris Dahl and über-publisher John Sterling, the duo that launched this long and strange voyage and brought it ashore with their characteristic patience, optimism, and constructive prodding. Thanks also to the Henry Holt cult of editors, designers, and assistants, and to Jolanta Benal for another painstaking copyedit and fact-check.

  Finally, and forever, love and worshipful gratitude to my wife, Geraldine, the Plymouth Rock of this endeavor and every other in my life.

  ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

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  Courtesy of John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. From De Insulis Inventis, Basel, 1493.