Tony Horwitz offers a very interesting travel adventure about the history of who discovered America. Horwitz realized his lack of knowledge about the Europeans who discovered American when he went to visit Plymouth Rock. As Horwitz stated “I’d mislaid an entire century, the one separating Columbus’s sail in 1492 from Jamestown’s founding in 16-0 something…Expensively educated at a private school and university-a history major, no less!-I’d matriculated to middle age with a third grader’s grasp of early America” (p. 13-14). His process of re-education required him to examine the Vikings, look for Columbus’s remains, track Coronado expedition, and end with the Anglos in Virginia. In this writing, Tony Horwitz argues that the period before the landing of the Mayflower in 1620 has been largely neglected in the stories America tells about itself and what we think we know is largely wrong. Through the use of first-hand encounters and reporting, Horwitz records what he finds. Unbeknown to many Americans, the first discovery of America was achieved by the Norsemen (also known as the Vikings) half a millennium before all the others. Since many historical evidences are provided by writings, it took some time for the Norsemen to receive their credit due. There were several sagas written about…show more content… It would not be patriotic of a country to proudly announce that some of the first colonists of what is now United States soil were not English Pilgrims. School age children are taught that the first Protestant refuge in North America was established by English Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1620, when in fact La Caroline in Florida was established in 1564 by the French. During Horwitz visit to the historic La Caroline, he found that it may not have been the location of the fort, the park service put it up in 1964, and that when visitors find out it is a French site, it caused them to turn around and go back to their cars in disgust (p.