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4.08 AVERAGE
4.08 AVERAGE
This book exposes the creepy side of Civil War obsessives. Hilarious and sobering at the same time.
I assigned this in my Civil War & Reconstruction class this spring, in lieu of a more traditional account of Reconstruction. I'd read this when I took CW & R as an undergraduate, and when I TAed the course in grad school. I remembered it as more funny than I found it this time (although, there's a chapter called "The Civil Wargasm" so there is still quite a bit of humor in it), but I think that's simply the political climate in which I was reading it this time. I think that made it a valuable assignment, to be honest--when it was written in 1997, or when I read it in 2006, I think it was comforting to think that some of the people in this book, clinging to a long-finished war and using it to justify white supremicist fantasies or other ideologies, were an exception, a weird fringe of American society. In 2019, of course, we cannot pretend that that is the case. Horwitz grapples repeatedly with the "why" of this choice to drape oneself in the flag of an arguably treasonous and certainly racist cause--but in 1997, as today, the answers of how to effectively combat this tendency remain complicated and uncertain.
In spite of this book being 22 years old now (!) I still think this is a valuable and timely read, perhaps more relevant than it ever has been. As I read through it this semester, I found myself hoping for an updated version, with a new chapter or three, or at least a new foreword or something. Tragically, Horwitz (whose other books are also great) passed away only a couple of weeks ago, far too young, and unexpectedly. So the Confederates of 1865 and 1997 and 2019 must exist without author update, and it remains a puzzle and challenge for Americans to figure out how to remember this war, learn from this war, and yet not celebrate it in the toxic ways that often pop up in this book.
In spite of this book being 22 years old now (!) I still think this is a valuable and timely read, perhaps more relevant than it ever has been. As I read through it this semester, I found myself hoping for an updated version, with a new chapter or three, or at least a new foreword or something. Tragically, Horwitz (whose other books are also great) passed away only a couple of weeks ago, far too young, and unexpectedly. So the Confederates of 1865 and 1997 and 2019 must exist without author update, and it remains a puzzle and challenge for Americans to figure out how to remember this war, learn from this war, and yet not celebrate it in the toxic ways that often pop up in this book.
Great book, entertaining and I learned a lot of things. It's a great commentary on southern society and culture which is most definitely it's own society and culture.
One of my favorite books of all time and a must-read if you grew up below the Mason-Dixon.
Despite being written in 1998, it's surprisingly current.
adventurous
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
This book goes through the history and the feelings to day on being Southern, what the Confederacy means, and what the rebel battle flag means to each of the core Southern states. There is a little bit of something for everyone, and really was a great read.
This book is pretty much everything I want piled together in 400 pages.
From the perspective of an experienced war correspondent, Horwitz reports on the Civil War as it continues to rage in many places in the South. He reveals the intolerance and hate that lies beneath much of today’s pro-Confederacy posturing, but he also teases out the more subtle struggles as groups and individuals attempt to reconcile history with the social and economic realities of the present. This book is a sociological study, an examination of history and the ways we interpret and tell it, and a personal journey for the author, a Civil War buff as a child. The development of Horwitz’s understanding of the South’s war with the past appears in microcosm in the development of his relationship with a hardcore Civil War reenactor, who starves himself to look more authentic, never washes his Confederate uniform, and disdains actual battle reenactments because they can’t be authentic enough without live ammunition. At the beginning of Horwitz’s journey, Rob Hodge appears as a likeable nut who obsesses about the minutiae of a war fought a century and a half ago. By the end, Hodge comes off as perhaps the most likeable and most balanced interpreter of them all.