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Summary: Horwitz identifies two enduring American legacies
Review: Tony Horwitz has launched into an exploration of the Civil War--and has come across two enduring legacies of our country: slavery (now known as "racism") and states' rights. Both were involved in the Civil War--and both continue.The book is both humorous and frightening. It is also highly informative and educational.
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Summary: Best book I have read all year!
Review: As a U.S. History teacher and Civil War enthusiast, I enjoyed Tony Horwitz's objective analysis of the Southern mindset and his own obsession with the Civil War immensely. Not only is the author an outstanding, humorous,entertaining and gifted writer, his insights are unbiased, accurate and straightforward. I learned so much about the South and the Civil War, and I even better understand my own preoccupation with the Civil War. This is the best book I have read this year, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in re-enacting, the Civil War, race relations, or the Southern mind.
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Summary: People from 130 years ago must think we're all loony
Review: Horwitz's writing style is beautiful. He has an unabashedly Jewish, white, urban, young and educated perspective from which he interprets the people and events that he comes across. The result is obviously skewed, but in a way that is lighthearted and surprisingly open. He meets an extraordinary range of people in this trip, and portrays them all with an earnestness and sense of humor that admits his own humanity as well as all of ours.
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Summary: Makes you want to go there
Review: Have always been interested in the USA Civil War but after reading this fascinating journey through both past and present USA will one day get to some of those places. Shiloh in particular has always been of interest and this book is the closest I have ever got to being there. I loved this book, it immerses the reader in the subject and takes you out of your present into the past. Magic!
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Summary: Horwitz captures the farb vs. hardcore reenacting hobby well
Review: I met Tony briefly after participating in one of the battles on July 4,1998 at Gettysburg.He signed and graciously "covered" my shortage of cash to buy a copy of his Confederates in the Attic, so I may be a bit prejudiced.But I liked his book very much. Now I can better understand why I am considered a "farb" by some of the veteran hardcores in our regiment (28 Massachusetts). The opening chapter was so hilarious I have been sharing it with my non-reenactor friends, and even sent one another copy of the book for his enjoyment. The recurring theme of unrelenting emnity of some between the races and even between the south and their former victors was somewhat depressing but enlightening. I feel Tony captured the motivations and some of the experiences of today's "living historians" very well. Good work and kudos for the effort that went into getting a first-hand story of this segment of our society as well as the hobby some o! ! f us enjoy so much
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Summary: Worth the effort to track down and read
Review: The book was interesting but done in a choppy fashion. Mr. Horowitz did a fine job at showing how the Civil War moves people in 1990's America (I, for one, would have NEVER imagined someone doing a Civil Wargasm), but he doesn't seem able to grasp the fact that there are millions of Southerners who love their heritage and are NOT the racist types that he wrote about. Also he doesn't seem to grasp major causes of the war and only accepts the PC reason that the war was fought to defend slavery. This leads him to the obscene thought of it being a good thing for young Southerners to forget the sacrifices of their forefathers. If that EVER happened, it would indeed be tragic. All in all, though, the book is worthy of reading.
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Summary: Green Acres meets Burn's Civil War
Review: This book is very well-written and a quick read, but it's no classic. For me, the biggest annoyance was his ritual quoting of the Burn's PBS documentary as if it were the gold standard of Civil War scholarship. I loved Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust, but it has nothing to do with the Civil War; however, since Shelby Foote read a paragraph of it in the Burn's documentary, we have to read a section of it because Horwitz is at Gettysburg? Pretty sad. The other annoyance is his polar-opposite approach to the people he talks to. He's either talking to reenactors whom he portrays as kindly, working-class, inadvertant racists who are his new best friends, or he talks to people who have no idea what the Civil War is, where it was fought, etc. Not a random sampling approach, but I don't think Horwitz is presenting this book as a scholarly work: its a journalistic piece. On the positive side, he has a great voice, and his chapter headings are wonderful. The idea for the book is good too. If you want to learn about the real South though, this book is the literary equivalent of Green Acres.
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Summary: A traipse through places and issues of the Civil War.
Review: Tony Horwitz has written an excellent modern day traipse through many of the places and lingering issues of the Civil War. It is obvious in his writing that his perspective is based, in part, on a long lasting personal fascination and interest in the history of the Civil War. From Shiloh to Charleston, the work touches on some unique places of the War. As the great, great grandson of a well known Civil War guerrilla, I thoroughly enjoyed the myriad of places he visited and his attempt in each place to uncover and unravel the personal ties and feelings we each have for the war today. His adventures with the hardcores and his attempt not to "farb out" offer delightful pieces of resulting humor which are appropriately spaced throughout the book. Anyone with an interest in the Civil War would appreciate this well written and informative book, as Mr. Horwitz peers over his shoulder back at the single most important time in American history.
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Summary: Very Interesting, Fun
Review: This book is definitely 5 star material. It was great fun and full of humor. I didn't know people did these things. He was fair to both sides and weaved the not so serious with the serious. Shortly after finishing this book, I was in Biloxi, MS, June 1, 1998, when they opened the Jefferson Davis Memorial Library. I encountered a real-life re-enactor, who didn't appear to be a "farb", and he was quick to inform me that he was dressed in "period dress" not a costume. It was 100 degrees plus with 90% humidity, and this guy, with his wife, are in full wool period dress, drinking mint juleps on the veranda of Green Oaks Inn, a restored 1840's antebellum mansion. I thought, thanks to Horwitz, I know about these people. I'm not sure what I would have thought of this fellow without Horwitz. Well, to be honest, I still don't know what to think. My thinking is always a work in progress. Now, I think Horwitz, should tackle the Indian and Freedman in Oklahoma and the rest of the West.
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Summary: This book made me so angry
Review: I swore that if I wrote a review of this book I wouldn't start it by saying "As a Southerner..." as if my being from Mississippi gives me more of an understanding of the Civil War "farb"-arianism that Mr. Horowitz discloses in his book than someone from, say, the Bronx. (See the book to understand what a "farb" is.) But reading this book gave me Southern flashbacks--hot, muggy nights, spiteful rednecks, depressing, apathetic little towns. Just pick any chapter and find Mr. Horowitz almost nearly dead-on with his descriptions and observations. He's got the whole South--Old and proudly un P.C. and the New proudly P.C.-- exactly right. It's a flea-pit, as boring a right-wing sinkhole as you could imagine. Yet charming. And friendly. And horrible. As far as bias goes, I found the whole depressing, Rebel-loving cadre of fools and menaces that Mr. Horowitz uncovers is given plenty of rope to hang themselves with, and they do a fine job choking the life out of one another as any third-party observer ever could. Most of all, I think the things he discovers among the Civil War philes is that their condition is not something that's endemic just to bored, white middle-class Americans. Fanaticism and predjudice wears many faces. MORAL: When Americans love one other more than winning then the lessons of the Civil War will finally be learned.
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