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A review by jeremyanderberg
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz
4.0
The late Tony Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, penned a number of travelogue-esque books in which he roamed the world and wrote about it, giving history lessons along the way. In Confederates in the Attic, the native Washingtonian man (DC, not state) and amateur Civil War buff traveled throughout the South exploring why the Civil War and its memory maintains such a strong grip on the region's collective memory.
Each chapter chronicles a different immersive experience Horwitz embarks on: participating in "battles" with hardcore re-enactors (who shed weight to look more gaunt); touring a number of battlefields and sites; more seriously, a look at the aftermath of the murder of a white man at the hands of a black man for having a Confederate flag on his truck; a long conversation with writer Shelby Foote (whose work is high on my list); another long conversation with a woman believed to have been the oldest living Confederate widow; and plenty more.
It was a really fascinating and oftentimes funny book. It gets into history lessons sure, but it's far more about the cultural legacy of the Civil War that remains strong in the South, and why. Why are Robert Lee and Stonewall Jackson and the Confederate experience as a whole so romanticized (as in Gone With the Wind)? Well, much of the war took place on Southern soil; the landscapes — from fields to forests to cities — were laid to waste. For many folks — especially white ones — the war just isn't as over as Northerners think it is.
At times it feels like a hit job — like Horwitz is doing some character assassination on the people he's talking to. That's perhaps too strong . . . maybe he's simply poking fun at how seriously Southerners take it, or somewhat hanging his superior intellectualism over them. Either way, I understand some of the critiques.
That said, and though it was a hair long at times, I really enjoyed reading this book. It gave some understanding to our continued fascination with the war — why the Confederate flag still flies all around the nation and why literal monuments to the "Lost Cause" are still found throughout the South (and why they've come under fire in the last couple years).
I think I'll pitch it to book club, which means a few things: I found the book a pleasure to read, it was easy enough reading that everyone can finish it in 4-5 weeks, and it was interesting enough to generate a lot of discussion. Confederates in the Attic is a book about the Civil War that anyone can read and enjoy. For someone like me who is about as Northern as you can get (Skol Vikings!), it was an insightful window into a seemingly foreign land.
I'm looking forward to diving into Horwitz's other work, including this year's Spying on the South, in which he again travels through the South, but this time with the idea of figuring out how our nation became so divided.
Each chapter chronicles a different immersive experience Horwitz embarks on: participating in "battles" with hardcore re-enactors (who shed weight to look more gaunt); touring a number of battlefields and sites; more seriously, a look at the aftermath of the murder of a white man at the hands of a black man for having a Confederate flag on his truck; a long conversation with writer Shelby Foote (whose work is high on my list); another long conversation with a woman believed to have been the oldest living Confederate widow; and plenty more.
It was a really fascinating and oftentimes funny book. It gets into history lessons sure, but it's far more about the cultural legacy of the Civil War that remains strong in the South, and why. Why are Robert Lee and Stonewall Jackson and the Confederate experience as a whole so romanticized (as in Gone With the Wind)? Well, much of the war took place on Southern soil; the landscapes — from fields to forests to cities — were laid to waste. For many folks — especially white ones — the war just isn't as over as Northerners think it is.
At times it feels like a hit job — like Horwitz is doing some character assassination on the people he's talking to. That's perhaps too strong . . . maybe he's simply poking fun at how seriously Southerners take it, or somewhat hanging his superior intellectualism over them. Either way, I understand some of the critiques.
That said, and though it was a hair long at times, I really enjoyed reading this book. It gave some understanding to our continued fascination with the war — why the Confederate flag still flies all around the nation and why literal monuments to the "Lost Cause" are still found throughout the South (and why they've come under fire in the last couple years).
I think I'll pitch it to book club, which means a few things: I found the book a pleasure to read, it was easy enough reading that everyone can finish it in 4-5 weeks, and it was interesting enough to generate a lot of discussion. Confederates in the Attic is a book about the Civil War that anyone can read and enjoy. For someone like me who is about as Northern as you can get (Skol Vikings!), it was an insightful window into a seemingly foreign land.
I'm looking forward to diving into Horwitz's other work, including this year's Spying on the South, in which he again travels through the South, but this time with the idea of figuring out how our nation became so divided.