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.
“Eloquent and comprehensive. . . . By presenting post-1492 history
as a series of encounters between the various peoples of the
Americas and the peoples from Europe, Africa, and Asia—rather than
as an account of Europe’s discovery of a new world—Blackhawk
provides a view of that past from multiple perspectives. . . . In
the book’s sweeping synthesis, standard flashpoints of U.S. history
take on new meaning.”—Kathleen DuVal, Wall Street Journal
“Even as the telling of American history has become more complex
and nuanced, Native Americans tend to be absent. Blackhawk, a
professor at Yale, confronts that absence in this sweeping account
of how Native Americans shaped the country legally, politically,
and culturally.”—Washington Post, “50 Notable Works of Nonfiction”
(2023)
“A sweeping, important, revisionist work of American history that
places Native Americans front and center.”—New York Times Book
Review (cover review)
“[A] monumental reappraisal of the United States’ history. . . .
Blackhawk . . . foregrounds the endurance of Native Americans’
autonomy and traditions in the face of their near-eradication.”—New
Yorker, “The Best Books of 2023”
“An ambitious retelling of the American story . . . placing
Indigenous populations at the center, a shift in perspective that
yields fresh insights and thought-provoking questions.”—Greg
Cowles, New York Times Book Review, “Editors’ Choice”
“In accounts of American history, Indigenous peoples are often
treated as largely incidental—either obstacles to be overcome or
part of a narrative separate from the arc of nation-building.
Blackhawk . . . challenges those minimalizations and exclusions,
showing that Native communities have, instead, been inseparable
from the American story all along.”—Washington Post Book World,
“Books to Read in 2023”
“This ambitious retelling of the American story, by a historian who
is also a Native American, places Indigenous populations at the
center, a shift in perspective that yields fresh insights and
thought-provoking questions.”—New York Times, “100 Notable Books of
2023”
“[Blackhawk’s] book will become an indispensable text for a
generation of researchers, educators and students.”—Caroline Dodds
Pennock, BBC History Magazine
A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Best Book of 2023
“Gripping and nuanced, The Rediscovery of America is an essential
remedy to the historical record.”—Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire,
“The 20 Best Books of 2023”
“Building on years of groundbreaking work by Indigenous and settler
scholars, Rediscovery clearly sets out how Indigenous nations were
key actors in shaping the very foundations of the US, from the
American Revolution and the national Constitution to the country’s
eventual borders.”—Brian Bethune, The Walrus
2023 National Book Award winner, nonfiction category, sponsored by
the National Book Foundation
2024 Mark Lynton History Prize winner, sponsored by Columbia School
of Journalism and Nieman Foundation
Finalist, 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History
Selected for the 2024 Michigan Notable Books list
2024 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards winner, nonfiction category,
sponsored by the Cleveland Foundation
“The Rediscovery of America is a testimony to the transformation of
the field of American Indian history over the past several decades,
and Blackhawk has abandoned the ‘interpretive tools’ of generations
of American historians.”—Brenda J. Child, University of
Minnesota
“Ned Blackhawk’s elegant and sweeping account of American history
illuminates five centuries of Native American history. He upends
familiar narratives to reveal the enduring centrality and vitality
of Native peoples in American political life.”—Barbara Krauthamer,
Emory University
“Ned Blackhawk not only restores Native Americans to the core of
the continent’s story but also offers a running analysis spanning
immense times and climes.”—Andrés Reséndez, author of Conquering
the Pacific
“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 the National Book
Award finalist Unworthy Republic
“Ranging across the continent and across the centuries, Ned
Blackhawk skillfully interweaves American history and Native
American history, demonstrating conclusively that we cannot
properly understand one without the other.”—Colin G.
Calloway, Dartmouth College
“Refusing to tell simple stories of subordination or resistance,
Ned Blackhawk shows how American politics, law, diplomacy, the
economy, and popular culture become incomprehensible without a
Native presence.”—Richard White, Stanford University
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