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Summary: A long journey across the south covering many topics:
Review: This book could have easily been constructed as a fun and interesting type of documentary film. Tony Horwitz tries to nail down the attraction to the Southern cause many years after the battle. Horwitz travels with reenactors, visits popular Civil War battlefields and sites that covers much of the south. Interesting commentary from local townsfolk, political views and Horwitz's knack for bringing in some humor to his personal narrative really set this book apart. As the reader you learn as the author learns. Follow his journies into the deep back country places few know about or to popular tourist areas such as Gettysburg. Horwitz brings to life the Confederate cause by interviewing many different people from multiple backgrounds. Such a great journey by Horwitz has really brought to life that many still feel that the South has not surrendered nor lost the war entirely. This book is well written, entertaining and enjoyable to read!
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Summary: This is one hell of a book!!
Review: When I fist read this book I had never heard of the Author Tony Horwitz and I have to say that I found him to be stunning, that is the narrative itself. The narration of this is composed of a series of trips that he took through the south in the middle 90s. This book does a wonderful job of trying to explain the differences between the regions and the shared history that drove this country apart for a brief period in the 1860s. My Impression-This book is as deep as it is humorous. Mr. Horwitz meets some very interesting people in this book Daughters of the Confederacy
Klansmen
Civil War Reinactors(both the puriest and non puriests, or FARBS and Non-FARBS as they like to call themselves.
He also travels to the state of my current residence and meets some people from his region of the country that support the Confederate Flag( I.E, Northerners) I just found that odd. So if you are from the south and read this book you will have a new appreciation for just how strange we can seem to our brothers to the north. If you are from the north and read this book by the time you are finished you will have a new understanding (or a deepening bafflement) of the question that has been asked by northerners for years. "why do southerners show such devotion(in some cases almost a divination) to a nation that was defeated almost 140 years ago," Bottom Line Mr. Horwitz does a good job of making sure that if you don't accept it you do at least UNDERSTAND the point this book is trying to make. This book is wonderful
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Summary: WoW how do you picture the civil war
Review: This book is a must read for anyone interested in the civil war or just interest in legacy of the war. Horwitz with humor and compassion gets to how people view the Civil War. You can see how a war fought 140 odd years ago is still important to so many people. I was assigned to read this book for college and am grateful I had to read this book otherwise I never would have picked it up. Enjoy it.
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Summary: Very entertaining!
Review: Tony Horwitz' "Confederates in the Attic" is a poignant, insightful and entertaining journey, which - in my case - was personalized and brought to life by the narration of the talented Michael Beck (I listened to the six-hour Audible version). For Civil War buffs, sociologists, or anyone interested in the juxtaposition of the old and new South, this is a must-read. Furthermore, I would recommend this to any Southern native who wants to get a little more understanding of what shaped the world they grew up in.
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Summary: Fantastic!
Review: I read this book in one sitting. It's extremely lively, well-written and a great deal of fun---and it makes you think! I'm actually an historian and I'll confess---very few historians write history as well as Horowitz does and very few will ever have the impact he has had. At countless academic conferences, I have heard historians mumbling jealously about this book---all of them envy it and wish they had written it. Despite being a deep-dyed-in-wool Yankee (or maybe because I am a Yankee), I thought this book did a fantastic job at explaining who we are as Americans and why we have had such a difficult time escaping from the legacy of the Civil War. While the book is very funny (I loved the stories of the Civil War re-enactors---esp. the ones who practice the "bloat" of malnutrition), it is also rather depressing. As long as Americans (both those north and south of the Mason-Dixon line) cling to this silly idea of a "grand old South" complete with Tara, gallant Confederates and so on, we will never really be able to deal with our racial problems. Horowitz's visit to a school where he discovered that the children knew nothing abt their past but clung to the old prejudices anyway was something I will never forget. It does an incredible job of illustrating how the historical myth often becomes more important than the reality. My one great hope is that the popularity of the book may cause people to re-think all of those cherished and silly myths we have about the South. Let's face it, guys, Ashley Wilkes was a slave holder. Not exactly the qualifications I look for when assigning the role of gentleman!
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Summary: Tour of CW History sites and with updated Social Commentary
Review: The author takes a roaming tour of Civil war sites and he provides an updated social view of the people and places where these sites lie. He starts with an introduction to one of the more extreme and realistic re-enactors who takes the role well over the edge. His man Rob goes beyond the legitimate necessity of clothing, materials and even the acting of the role. He stays lean for the deprived Confederate look and practices bloating to portray the dead. My best parts of the book are the history/social stops through the south that incorporate not only visits to primary Civil War sites but some as remote as prison and hospital sites with lonely graves nearby. The author notes the historical happenings of the sites quite well but he also notes it's impact on the town and the people. He also describes some of the individual people that live there today and he tells of the effects the war's legacy may have had on them and their town. Some of the these are very interesting while others reveal changes that are disappointing such as the excavation near the banks of the Mississippi at Vicksburg that are damaging veteran burial sites and impacts other Civil War sites. Horwitz writes with an objective eye and writes of things that are also unsettling such as Guthrie, Kentucky the site of a racial fallout over flags and racism resulting in a murder which became a subsequent rallying point for white supremacists. While he covers many of the historical sites well such as Shiloh most of what he captures is his personal experience with people at these sites and his situational experiences like camping in the woods at Five Forks while being pelted by rain, then heat than mosquitoes. The histories are relevant and sometimes brief but he gives you an updated look at life in the south which include humor. Some of the humorous samples include the gun shop with the sign "Shoplifters will be shot on site, survivors will be shot again", his visit with grumpy Shelby Foote who growls but still answers his own phone and grants a personal interview and his search for the Gone With The Wind plantation in Georgia. Also includes a scary encounter with an oversized redneck in a redneck bar that didn't appreciate an author in his midst. A little harsh sometimes in his descriptions, I see Petersburg as a historical jewel with original homes from the 1700's and 1800's still in use and coming back to their original historical look with a great October Festival, the Siege Museum, endless battlefields, the crater etc. However, Horwitz makes comment that other than drinking beer and looking for tourists to talk to, the residents find Petersburg a slow town. It's all a matter of perspective. This book is a mixture of Ian Frazier and Emory Thomas. Horwitz's new book, Blue Latitudes, following the travels of Cook is even better. "Latitudes" is history and a vacation at the same time along with a social view of those lands so far away.
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Summary: Wonderful!
Review: I absolutely loved this book and I recommend it to anyone mildly interested in the American civil war. It is well-written and extremely insightful. It taught me more about the south in modern times than it did the war itself. What a read!
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Summary: Sometimes we laugh at ourselves
Review: Confederates in the Attic is one man's introduction and learning about people who still fight the War Between the States. Tony Horwitz discovered reenactors and others to whom the war has a strong meaning in their lives. What he finds is both amusing and poignant, and sometimes jolts many of us out of our complacent notion that reconstruction was a success and now it's over. As he visits battlefields and meets people, Horwitz meets some of the most interesting, and sometimes bizarre, people one can imagine. These are not your ordinary reenactors and Civil War buffs. They take their history seriously, some too much so. Like those who believe it's a shame that no one actually dies when a battle is re-created (perhaps tongue in cheek?). Horwitz went looking for the hardcore and he found them. His search took him almost exclusively through the south, where most of the battles were fought. Those Civil War buffs he finds are partial to grey uniforms and the cause of the Confederacy. One does wonder what would have happened had he gone north. Yes, there are reenactment groups in those states, too. Where else would one find the boys in blue on that side of the battlefield? This is a book that could whet one's interest in the War Between the States. There is certainly a plethora of books and magazines to satisfy such an interest, from accounts of battles to memoirs of participants and biographies of individuals. It is often difficult to find authors who can give an unbiased account, but that is part of the fun.
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Summary: Unbelieveably readable
Review: Horwitz has a certain style that is extremely readable; and the subject-matter of the book is likewise interesting. The book is basically a record of Horwitz's travels through the South (to non-American readers, that is southern USA) and his experiences in seeking out Southerners who remember the American Civil War of 1861-65. Tony Horwitz has described Northerners who have read this book as coming up to him and saying "Is it really like that down there?" For an Australian, this reaction is multiplied tenfold. Yes, it really is like that "down there". The whole world has a culture heavily influenced (or, in the case of Australia, practially based on) America's culture. The shock of this book is in discovering a whole other America - an America of which even very many Americans are largely ignorant. The South is like America's subconscious - sort of the same, but with certain underlying peculiarities. Of course, as with any other culture, that of the South is a product of its history. The remembrance of the American Civil War is much stronger in the South than elsewhere in America. By some it is not just remembered but virtually worshipped. Horwitz contacts two types of "worshippers" in his travels - the benign (and often hilarious) re-enactors or "living historians", who are largely apolitical; and the exceedingly disturbing groups such as the UDC, who are highly political - they salute the Confederate Third National Flag, (which cannot be changed "until the Confederate government reconvenes"), teach their children to hate Yankees and to recite Confederate "catechisms", and above all believe that the Old South was a glorious place where the slaves were loyal and grateful to their masters.
It is to Horwitz's credit that he usually stops short of open criticism of such people, or indeed anyone. While his liberal leanings are made clear, he is never openly outraged. His criticisms of the people he meets are subtle, likely to be more ironic than explicit. This is so even when he meets members of the Ku Klux Klan. Above all Horwitz's deep love of the South and its history (he is a Northerner living in Virginia) comes through; and he never treats anyone he meets, or their beliefs, with light dismissal. We feel his horror at seeing the battlefield of Chencellorsville covered with a mini-mall; or Atlanta's bulldozing, and Orwellian suppression, of its antebellum past; or the general soullessness of modern cities compared with the great historical events that once took place there. In a way, the presentation of this alternative America, hiding beneath the surface of the tarmac and strip malls, is strangely comforting sometimes. It indicates the surprising - and rich - alienness that can sometimes lurk even within the dullest facades. And Southern history *is* fascinating.
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Summary: A perfect read for civil war buffs and no-nothings alike
Review: When I picked up Confederates in the Attic I was really excited and a bit worried about what I would find inside. I knew nothing of the civil war and was interested to learn from a modern standpoint. It is fascinating to read not only about what battles were fought where, and personal accounts from the war, but also how alive it still is in the South.
I was worried that the ignorance I was bound to be subjected to when reading about such a controversial topic would enrage me-- but the author has such a tolerant approach to all those he interviewed, I found myself simply feeling sorry for those who still had so much anger about a lost cause.
People wanted to open up to Horwitz and I was amazed by the large, varied number of voices who spoke candidly to him. I highly recommend this not only as a history lesson for those who need it, but as a way to see the way people think about a cause most northerners barely think about.
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