Horwitz turns over Plymouth Rock

PLYMOUTH, Mass. -- Tony Horwitz is back where it all began, at the most famous lump of granite in American history: Plymouth Rock.

But it doesn't refer to American history, no matter what you may have learned in third grade about the Mayflower Compact, that first Thanksgiving of 1621 and those pilgrims in funny hats.

It marks the waterfront tourist spot where Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter turned best-selling author, began to realize how little he, like many others, knew about what he now calls "pre-Mayflower America." That's the subject of his new book, A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World (Henry Holt, $27.50), which begins and ends in Plymouth.

The title is borrowed from Christopher Columbus, who, like Horwitz, didn't always know where he was going. (Columbus, in fact, didn't always know where he had been.)

The book is a ...