The Rediscovery of North America (Clark Lectures) - Hardcover

Lopez, Barry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813117429 ISBN 13: 9780813117423

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky, 1991

Synopsis

" The Spanish incursion into the New World, with its brutal destruction of indigenous peoples and their cultures and its material exploitation of much of two continents, reverberates in our history down to the present century. So contends prize-winning writer Barry Lopez in this beautifully written book. "The quest for personal possessions," he observes, "was to be, from the outset, a series of raids, irresponsible and criminal, a spree, in which an end to it was never visible . . . in which an end to it had no meaning." In this luminous essay, written five hundred years after the Spanish conquest, Lopez reexamines the attitudes that informed that event and that have underlain the entire European settlement of America. "The assumption of an imperial right conferred by God, sanctioned by the state, and enforced by the militia, the assumption that one is due wealth in North America," he writes, is apparent in the journals of people on the Oregon Trail, in the pronouncements of nineteenth-century industrialists, and in the political rhetoric of our own day. But, for Lopez, coming to grips with this terrible legacy opens new possibilities. "This violent corruption needn't define us. We can take the measure of the horror and assert that we will not be bound by it." We can "rediscover" our continent―not as a source of income but as a home, a place in which we are to find our strength and character, and in which certain moral courtesies and obligations obtain. We can develop a philosophy of place will enable us, finally, to take up a true residence in our homeland. Here is a voice for our time.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Five hundred years ago an Italian whose name, translated into English, meant Christopher Dove, came to America and began a process not of discovery, but incursion -- "a ruthless, angry search for wealth" that continues to the present day. This provocative and superbly written book gives a true assessment of Columbus's legacy while taking the first steps toward its redemption. Even as he draws a direct line between the atrocities of Spanish conquistadors and the ongoing pillage of our lands and waters, Barry Lopez challenges us to adopt an ethic that will make further depredations impossible. The Rediscovery of North America is a ringingly persuasive call for us, at long last, to make this country our home.

From the Back Cover:

A few hours after midnight on the morning of October twelfth in the Julian calender of the West--or October twenty second, according to the modern Gregorian calender--Juan Rodriguez Bermeo, a lookout aboard the caravel Pinta, spotted the coast of either San Salvador Island or Samana Cay in the Bahamas and shouted his exclamation into the darkness.

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0813117429
• ISBN 13: 9780813117423
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 64