Rediscovery of America

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 JournalSelected by New York Times Book Review as a Best Book Since 2000“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)“Blackhawk never lets us forget that his book is not a work of ‘Indigenous history’ but rather one of American history. He eloquently argues that ‘the enduring sovereignty of Native communities’ must be recognized ‘as a defining thread of US politics.’”—Nicole Eustace, New York Review of Books“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”2023 National Book Award winner, nonfiction category, sponsored by the National Book FoundationFinalist, 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in HistorySelected for the 2024 Michigan Notable Books list“Ned Blackhawk’s stunning achievement, The Rediscovery of America, is the most ambitious and creative account of Native American history yet published. In a style both invigorating and urgent, Blackhawk delivers a major new synthesis of the field of Native American history and an elegant, masterful narrative of Native independence and sovereignty.”—Judges’ citation, 2024 Mark Lynton History Prize  “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