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1454 ratings, 4.14 average rating, 301 reviews
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published
March 3rd 1998
by Pantheon Books
binding
Hardcover, 406 pages
isbn
0679439781
(isbn13: 9780679439783)
description
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tony Horwitz returned from years of traipsing through war zones as a foreign correspondent only to find that his chi...more
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 1894)
In Confederates in the Attic, journalist Tony Horwitz explores the ways in which the Civil War is still present in Southern culture.
I was a Civil War re-enactor in junior high and high school, and I particularly appreciated his chapter on that very strange hobby: "A Farb of the Heart." (Farb, by the way, is re-enactor slang for all things inauthentic.)
I've not always been impressed with Horwitz's books (I thought Baghdad without a Map to be particularly slight), but here...more
I was a Civil War re-enactor in junior high and high school, and I particularly appreciated his chapter on that very strange hobby: "A Farb of the Heart." (Farb, by the way, is re-enactor slang for all things inauthentic.)
I've not always been impressed with Horwitz's books (I thought Baghdad without a Map to be particularly slight), but here...more
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This book was a fun, adventurous journey and I would recommend it but is also unnerved me in some respects. The Civil War still grips our interest but for many Horwitz encountered it certainly remains an unfinished war, one that continues and one desired to begin anew. I knew there were “re-enactors” but was ignorant that the hobby?? was practiced with such devotion and intensity and spread so far and wide across the South.
I did enjoy Horwitz’ dissection of the preponderance of several ...more
I did enjoy Horwitz’ dissection of the preponderance of several ...more
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The author and his wife awoke one morning to the sounds of a mock Civil War battle being filmed in front of their Virginia home. Subsequent conversations with the participants rekindled his childhood enthusiasm and launched Horwitz on a year-long quest to determine why the Civil War continues to enthrall so many Americans. He journeyed throughout the Old South, visiting battlefields and museums. He joined super hardcores such as Robert Lee Hodge, learning about farbs, spooning, and period rushes. ...more
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recommends it for:
Yankees who want to understand the South
OK, so I'm on a Civil War road trip with my Significant Other, following the "Lee's Retreat" tour and reading to him from "Confederates in the Attic" to pass the time. The section we were reading dealt with the bigger-than-life owner of an old general store that was turned into a museum of sorts.
I said "this is really over-the-top -- Horowitz maybe exaggerated this guy to make a better story." S.O. says "we should try to find the place" just about ...more
I said "this is really over-the-top -- Horowitz maybe exaggerated this guy to make a better story." S.O. says "we should try to find the place" just about ...more
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Read in January, 1999
recommends it for:
people into Civil War or the South
super entertaining and educational, but kind of peters out towards the end. The author is cuuute
It’s a ten-state travelogue detailing ways the South still identifies with the Civil War. The North may have moved on, but you’ll still see plenty of the “Fuck You” flag in grit territory. Horwitz goes on a Civil Wargasm with the guy on the cover of the book, which involves hitting as many Civil War sites and battlefields in a one-week period as possible. In period attire, of course.
Th...more
It’s a ten-state travelogue detailing ways the South still identifies with the Civil War. The North may have moved on, but you’ll still see plenty of the “Fuck You” flag in grit territory. Horwitz goes on a Civil Wargasm with the guy on the cover of the book, which involves hitting as many Civil War sites and battlefields in a one-week period as possible. In period attire, of course.
Th...more
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A good read, if one believes (or wants to believe) that Southern boogeymen, dressed in woolen uniforms, their archaic muskets gleaming in the sun, are waiting to launch a second "War for Southern Independence" against the sacred Union.
O.K., maybe that's a bit extreme. But I think Horowitz treats the South the way travel writer Horace Kephart once treated Southern Appalachian mountaineers -- as a peculiar race of people, consumed by some sort of divine madness that sets them at od...more
O.K., maybe that's a bit extreme. But I think Horowitz treats the South the way travel writer Horace Kephart once treated Southern Appalachian mountaineers -- as a peculiar race of people, consumed by some sort of divine madness that sets them at od...more
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Read in January, 2002
recommends it for:
Civil War History - Current events
A fantastic book from a credentialed journalist. When I wanted to learn about racism in America I started to read about the Civil War. I got caught up in the battles and the tactics and the personalities and forgot about the issues of why it started. This book helped remind me. Some Americans still feel it was the "War of Northern Aggression." The Civil War affects our country and race every day. At one point in the book, the author attends a community meeting where children are ...more
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If you've ever wondered why the South can't just get over the whole Civil War thing, this book explains--without being unduly sympathetic. It is also good for more than a few belly laughs--particularly if you are Southern, but even if you are not.
Horowitz is a Northern Jew by birth, whose immigrant European Jewish grandfather was fascinated by the Civil War--a fascination which he explains in a very logical and compelling way.
Similarly, he also explains the very real-life people whom h...more
Horowitz is a Northern Jew by birth, whose immigrant European Jewish grandfather was fascinated by the Civil War--a fascination which he explains in a very logical and compelling way.
Similarly, he also explains the very real-life people whom h...more
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Oh, they take this Civil War stuff waaaay to seriously, which makes for fun reading and a lot of anecdotal stories. Favorite phrase: "They're having their Civil Wargasm"
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An amazing journey through the American Civil War.
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I read the first bit of this book -- 40 p. or so? While visiting the 'house of murph' over Labor Day weekend. I want to finish it. It's one of those "I'm a journalist who found an angle to a story that grew out of a personal interest/hobby and traveled around talking to people, writing down what they said, and stringing it together with clever commentary"-books. And I found it really engaging. Even though - or perhaps *because* - I don't give a rusty rat's behind about the Civil War. I...more
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Read in July, 2008
Just got through this book for the second time; I'm rereading it because I've included it on my syllabus for the semester. What strikes me now: I wonder if this will seem as urgent to my students, who were in kindergarten when Horwitz toured the South, as it did to me when I first read six years ago? Certainly, the neo-Confederate movement is still out there (see Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction, Hague, Beirich, & Sebesta, eds.), but it now seems that the Culture Wars have ended or p...more
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This was not an easy book to read...not that it's written in a difficult-to-understand manner, but the story itself is at times painful. Author Horowitz spent a couple of years traveling through the South (or Dixie), describing and examining the remnants of the Civil War. It reminds me again of "The Lies my Teacher Taught Me" and other history books which explain how much our history as popularly taught or known is incorrect. Horowitz points out that in both the North and South, the...more
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Read in August, 2008
recommended to Caroline by:
Everyone.
At first I thought this would be all about Civil War reenactors...I mean, umm... "Active Historians." As much as I think these folks are totally wacky and fascinating, I was pleased that it's not the only thing Horwitz is concerned with. Really, the phenomenon just generates the question that drives the book: why does this war continue to be so significant?
The Civil War and all related baggage is such a complex topic, and I think Horwitz does an amazing job of respecting that. I r...more
The Civil War and all related baggage is such a complex topic, and I think Horwitz does an amazing job of respecting that. I r...more
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Read in September, 2008
This was a fascinating read. The author's premise was to investigate why the Civil War is still so fresh in the minds of so many people. Why are people still reenacting battles and worshipping the Confederacy? What does the Civil War mean to people in the South?
The answers are varied and complex and sometimes disturbing. I'm a bit conflicted about my own Confederate ancestry, so it was that much more interesting to figure out with the author what the Confederacy meant during the war and what...more
The answers are varied and complex and sometimes disturbing. I'm a bit conflicted about my own Confederate ancestry, so it was that much more interesting to figure out with the author what the Confederacy meant during the war and what...more
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Read in July, 2008
This is one of the best non-fiction books that I have ever read, although I spent probably half of the book being appalled at the lack of real human understanding by Southerners of the causes and consequences of the Civil War. I have a healthy appreciation for Southern "culture" and Civil War history, but I acknowledge both the good AND the bad and know when to call a spade a spade. The South was wrong and the war was about slavery and mythologizing it away hurts more than it helps. ...more
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I loved this book. I can't say enough good about it.
Tony Horwitz starts out by recalling his great-grandfather's fascination with the Civil War. Nothing strange about that; 150 years after it happened, plenty of people are still fascinated by the Civil War. I'm among them. But what sets apart Horwitz's great-grandfather's interest is the fact that he wasn't born in the US. He arrived long after the war was over, and didn't live in the South, where interest would, presumably, be higher. What...more
Tony Horwitz starts out by recalling his great-grandfather's fascination with the Civil War. Nothing strange about that; 150 years after it happened, plenty of people are still fascinated by the Civil War. I'm among them. But what sets apart Horwitz's great-grandfather's interest is the fact that he wasn't born in the US. He arrived long after the war was over, and didn't live in the South, where interest would, presumably, be higher. What...more
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Read in May, 2008
Very entertaining, although at times somewhat repetitive, observations on the un-reconstructed South. I was greatly amused by Horowitz's adventures with hardcore Civil War re-enactor Rob, and Rob's endless quest for the "period rush", a zen-like state reached only by total immersion in Civil War culture, dress, mannerisms, and customs.
Horowitz's descriptions of others he met as he probed the attitudes of the new South toward the Civil War were often not as lighthearted. Running...more
Horowitz's descriptions of others he met as he probed the attitudes of the new South toward the Civil War were often not as lighthearted. Running...more
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Read in April, 2008
Though I was always intrigued by the Civil War, being from Southern California I always vaguely classed it with the other great wars (Revolutionary, Crimean, First World War) that took place in eras I find generally fascinating. I never could and still can't understand the legacy it holds in the south, much of which never occurred to me until I read this book.
I found it highly amusing- I mean seriously, he hangs out with guys who pee on their buttons to get the right patina, as well as disturb...more
I found it highly amusing- I mean seriously, he hangs out with guys who pee on their buttons to get the right patina, as well as disturb...more
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Read in January, 2006
recommends it for:
history lovers
When I moved to Virginia in 1968, I found it more "foreign" in some ways than our previous home in the Philippines. Particularly unsettling was the cult of the Confederacy. My best friend in eighth grade was moved to tears by "Gone With the Wind." A standard project in high school was a paper on how the South could have won the Civil War. The pep band played "Dixie" at football games. In college, we hosted visiting student journalists from Washington & Lee who m...more
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