Pulitzer Prize General Non Fiction Winner
O Strange New World
by Howard Mumford Jones
Summary
A sweeping cultural history of how Europeans imagined, encountered, and reinterpreted the Americas during the formative centuries of colonization, focusing on the interplay between inherited Old World ideas and the shock of new geography. Jones weaves together literature, art, science, and political thought to show how the New World was as much a product of European imagination as of physical exploration. The work reframed the origins of American identity as a complex inheritance rather than a clean break with Europe.
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Historical Context & Significance
Jones challenged the "frontier" myth, arguing that American identity was a complex "translation" of European Renaissance and Enlightenment ideals rather than a purely native invention.