Rating: 
Summary: One of the greatest books of the decade
Review: Who Are We? What does it mean to be American? How did the Civil War define us? Why does it still seem to define us, especially in the South? I opened Horwitz's book expecting to be entertained by stories of eccentric hardcore re-enactors, the type of guys that live all weekend on hardtack and salt pork and then go back to their jobs as dentists and systems analysts.But this is not "just" a Civil War book. Tony Horwitz develops an interest in Civil War re-enactors when they show up in his back yard one morning. He follows them around on their weekend attempts to recreate the war. Through them, he discovers the continued obsession Americans have with the War itself. At first I was interested in this book because I am a history buff and a fan of re-enactments, but Horwitz has his sights set on a bigger topic than "just" hardcore re-enactors. He is investigating the role the War plays in our national Identity. It is the thing without which we would not be Americans at all. This is a book with a wonderful afterglow: it is an entertaining, fast read, highly enjoyable...but months after I first read it the questions I posed earlier were still running through my head, and I had to read it again. Amazon editors listed this as one of the best non-fiction books of the 1990s, and after a 2nd read, I still agree with them.
Rating:
Summary: Great and Easy Read
Review: I was impressed. What a wild adventure! My purpose in reading this book was to learn more about the locations of the civil war battles, and I learned that and much more. This book inspires me to read even more on the war. Anyone interested even remotely in this period of American history will enjoy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Read this book!
Review: This book, though not a political biography, or a battle analysis, and not written by McPhearson, Catton, or Freeman, might be one of the greatest Civil War books ever written. Horwitz goes throughout the South, in effect looking for the Civil War. On his way, he meets bikers, living historians, farbs, and Scarlett O'Hara. It reads like a novel, with characters so vivid they have to be real. There is never a dull moment, and it is amazing to see how many people still "fight" a war that ended 137 years ago.
Rating:
Summary: Read this book!
Review: This book, though not of political biography, or a battle analysis, and not written by McPhearson, Catton, or Freeman, might be opne of the greatest Civil War books ever written. Horwitz goes throughout the South, in effect looking for the Civil War. On his way, he meets bikers, living historians, farbs, and Scarlett O'Hara. It reads like a novel, with characters so vivid they have to be real. There is never a dull moment, and it is amazing to see how many people still "fight" a war that ended 137 years ago.
Rating:
Summary: The Civil War is not over
Review: This is the most eeriely reveling book ever written about the Civil War. The American Civil War is not over. The truth is seemingly hard to swallow. Follow along with Horwitz as he embarks on his own literary Civil Wargasm and find out the lingering history of the Southern involvement in the Civil War. It is beautifull written, very easy to understand, it reads more like a novel than a history book, but you learn just as much history and you do social commentary. Wonerful read, Horwitz is brilliant, but one last thing: The war is over, you lost! This gets my highest recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: "The past is not forgotten, it is not even past"
Review: This is a wonderful unfolding of our fascination with the Civil War. Tony Horowitz spends two years crawling around the South after some Civil War re-enactors show up on his lawn one day. He spends time with those re-enactors, and also visits a number of famous, infamous, and obscure Civil War sites. He talks to Civil War historians like Shelby Foote, and also visits small-town museums and memorials. What emerges isn't a single story, but a web of interlaced tales each with its own viewpoint. We're introduced to the revered and the crackpots, the expert and the ignorant. Horowitz' journey is something we might all daydream of doing after stopping at a roadside attraction or an historical marker that piques our interest about something. The story that emerges is complex yet fascinating. He explores the emotional as well as the factual side to people, places, and events associated with the war. Sometimes humorous, sometime tragic, the result is a fascinating book that may provoke more questions than it supplies answers but leaves the reader with a deeper understanding of the mark the Civil War left on us all.
Rating:
Summary: A balanced encounter with castle-strong Southern pride...
Review: A fantastic book with great pace. (What some call "highly readable.") The Civil War is still a proud rebel moment for many if not most Southerners, and the Amazon customer reviews of this book reflect that. To paraphrase Dixie boy Jeff Foxworthy, it's not that all Southerners are prejudiced and hateful - they just can't keep the most ignorant among them off the TV. While I truly love Southern Hospitality and the respect for tradition, I often find it exasperating and pointless. Tony Horwitz's book is NOT an unfair tabloid of cross-burning redneck fools - it's a balanced and subtle document of the conflicted feeling the South lives with even today. Horwitz spends much time with truly charming Civil War recreators. Those weekend "soldiers" certainly have views on the war, but they're so obsessed with recreating every detail - fasting, applying urine as a buckle shine, sneaking into Civil War parks after dark - they'd barely find time to be racist. Just playing boy games that are 100-times cooler than any Star Wars geek. They view the War as a valiant agrarian dignified David against the mean factory-obsessed Goliath. A war less about slavery and more about principle and romance. But many Southerners distrust, fear, or just plain hate blacks. They rarely admit it in this book, but that nasty vibe is definitely here. (Racists in general are getting adept at promoting their views with less violence and more sneaky words.) Tony Horwitz moves beyond the Boys with Toy Guns and interviews a life-sentence black delinquent who fatally shot a mean white teenager with a huge rebel flag on his pickup. (Was it a random killing or a hate crime against whites and the Rebel Flag?) Horwitz interviews leaders of the Selma Alabama '60s Civil Rights movement, recording their own ambiguities about black progress, where it happened, where it did not, and what it may mean. Ambiguious stuff - and never boring. This book has great pacing, and like any good exploration, raises so many more questions then it answers. It's strong enough to make me want to see a Dixie War buff Sunday recreation, and great enough for me to dive into Civil War books - a history I've paid little attention to until now. Excellent history, I'm just sorry America itself has never quite escaped it.
Rating: 
Summary: HORWITZ ACCENTUATES THE NEGATIVE
Review: Horwitz apparently went looking for the negative extremes in his journey into the world of Confederate reenacting. In addition, he painted inaccurate portraits of some of the 'characters' he encountered. I personally know one of the men that Horwitz interviewed and commented about. Horwitz did a great disservice to this individual in completely misrepresenting him and his motives and activities in the hobby. Instead of presenting him as the calm, thoughtful, introspective individual I know him to be, Horwitz presented him as a rabid extremist. While the writing was mildly entertaining at times, the representations of fact in the text have to be called into question due to what I know he was untruthful about. The inclusion of Rob Hodge as the 'star' of the book was a critical error on Horwitz' part. There are certainly hundreds, if not thousands, of more knowledgeable and much better uniformed and equipped living historians than he.
Rating:
Summary: Quite simply, this is an awful book
Review: Horwitz has missed a grand opportunity; instead of offering sound research on a fascinating subject, he provides readers with a large serving of overdone tripe and a side order of preconceived notions. Quite simply, this in awful book filled with the rantings of a biased, prejudiced journalist. He has an agenda: to hold our fellow Americans (southern folk) up to ridicule and scorn--and he is a master at doing this. Don't waste your time or money on this one . . . there are too many other good books out there.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, insightful
Review: OK, disclaimer time: I am a Yankee (from Connecticut, no less - the worst kind of Yankee), and my family has no ancestors who fought in the Civil War. But I loved Horwitz's exploration of the Civil War phenomenon that lives on in "living historians" and in all manner of remembrances throughout the South. Horwitz quotes historian Shelby Foote: "Southerners are very strange about that war"... true enough, as I read through his accounts of battle reenactments and Robert E. Lee birthday parties. Lest anyone say that the fascination with the Civil War is a Southern trait, there are a lot of Northerners who've acquired a thirst for this period in history, too (I once went to a reenactment of Chancellorsville staged in a Connecticut state park, have visited Gettysburg and the Fredericksburg/Wilderness area, and have read a ton of Bruce Catton). It's a subject that gets in your blood. So, why the obsession with this war? If Horwitz doesn't come to any universal truths, he at least shows the war as the defining moment of Southern culture. America in 1861 was still a country of regional accents and habits. The South has not lost its recollections of the past or its character, despite 137 years of change and development. For me, the interest is that the Civil War is there - in the mind and heart, almost within reach - through books, visits to battlefields and reenactments. The trappings of army life, the old daguerrotypes, the letters written by soldiers, the descriptions of combat and the personalities of each side all resonate in a way that no other period can. You don't have to be "hardcore" to wonder at the endurance of the soldiers, the code of honor of the times, and the belief that courage and elan would win the day. To paraphrase Shelby Foote, for every Southern boy today, it is always one o'clock on July 3, 1863, on the edge of a still and sunny field in Pennsylvania, just before Pickett's Charge. "Confederates in the Attic" taps into that feeling, and is both an enjoyable and insightful book.
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