Product Description

When prize-winning war correspondent Tony Horwitz leaves the battlefields of Bosnia and the Middle East for a peaceful corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he thinks he's put war zones behind him. But awakened one morning by the crackle of musket fire, Horwitz starts filing front-line dispatches again this time from a war close to home, and to his own heart.
        Propelled by his boyhood passion for the Civil War, Horwitz embarks on a search for places and people still held in thrall by America's greatest conflict. The result is an adventure into the soul of the unvanquished South, where the ghosts of the Lost Cause are resurrected through ritual and remembrance.
        In Virginia, Horwitz joins a band of 'hardcore' reenactors who crash-diet to achieve the hollow-eyed look of starved Confederates; in Kentucky, he witnesses Klan rallies and calls for race war sparked by the killing of a white man who brandishes a rebel flag; at Andersonville, he finds that the prison's commander, executed as a war criminal, is now exalted as a martyr and hero; and in the book's climax, Horwitz takes a marathon trek from Antietam to Gettysburg to Appomattox in the company of Robert Lee Hodge, an eccentric pilgrim who dubs their odyssey the 'Civil Wargasm.'
        Written with Horwitz's signature blend of humor, history, and hard-nosed journalism, Confederates in the Attic brings alive old battlefields and new ones 'classrooms, courts, country bars' where the past and the present collide, often in explosive ways. Poignant and picaresque, haunting and hilarious, it speaks to anyone who has ever felt drawn to the mythic South and to the dark romance of the Civil War.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #72735 in Books
• Published on: 1998-03-03
• Released on: 1998-03-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 406 pages

Amazon.com Review
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tony Horwitz returned from years of traipsing through war zones as a foreign correspondent only to find that his childhood obsession with the Civil War had caught up with him. Near his house in Virginia, he happened to encounter people who reenact the Civil War--men who dress up in period costumes and live as Johnny Rebs and Billy Yanks. Intrigued, he wound up having some odd adventures with the "hardcores," the fellows who try to immerse themselves in the war, hoping to get what they lovingly term a "period rush." Horwitz spent two years reporting on why Americans are still so obsessed with the war, and the ways in which it resonates today. In the course of his work, he made a sobering side trip to cover a murder that was provoked by the display of the Confederate flag, and he spoke to a number of people seeking to honor their ancestors who fought for the Confederacy. Horwitz has a flair for odd details that spark insights, and Confederates in the Attic is a thoughtful and entertaining book that does much to explain America's continuing obsession with the Civil War.

From Publishers Weekly
The first book the author's Russian grandfather bought on emigrating to the U.S., though he neither read nor spoke English, was about the Civil War, a book he still pored over into his 90s. And when Horwitz was a child, his father read him tales of the Civil War instead of fairy tales and children's literature. The powerful hold of that conflict on a diverse assortment of Americans translates into more than 60,000 books on the subject, according to the author; for some Civil War buffs it is an obsession that generates a startling number of clubs whose members regularly reenact the battles, playing out once again the logistics, problems, hardships, leading characters, losses and victories. Horwitz (Baghdad Without a Map), on a year-long exploration of these groups throughout the South, participated in some of their activities and came to know the lives and personalities of several of their members. His vivid, personal account is a mesmerizing review of history from a novel and entertaining angle.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
YA-Fascination with the Civil War runs in Horwitz's family. His Russian immigrant great-grandfather continued to pore over books on the subject at age 101 and his father read to the author each night from a 10-volume photographic history. Years later, 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 this 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." He conversed with the only living Confederate widow and witnessed both the "Catechism" taught to Children of Confederate Veterans and the attitudes of black teens in Selma, AL. While his encounters ran the gamut from amusing to infuriating to positively frightening, this Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter relates them all with clarity and honesty. Read Confederates simply for the engrossing, well-written account of contemporary American culture that it is or choose any chapter to spark or enliven class discussion. Don't miss this one.
Dori DeSpain, Herndon Fortnightly Library, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Great storyteller, compelling subject, wonderful book
Although I don't know more than the average person about the Civil War, I've always had a sneaking suspicion that it is still with us somehow. Tony Horwitz's "Confederates in the Attic" confirmed that suspicion and in a most amusing, touching, and balanced way.

A War reenactor friend recommended I read the book. We were talking about the modern-day states rights concerns and he said that the debate had its origins at Fort Sumter. So, I picked up the book thinking it would simply be a survey of what I now know is called neo-Confederate thought. But I was more than a little bit thrilled to find that it was not just a sociological study, but also a travelogue-probably my favorite kind of book.

After returning to the States from an extended time abroad, Horwitz's childhood interest in the Civil War-and especially Rebels-was rekindled after a band of hardcore reenactors showed up in his yard on their way to a battlefield. Soon he began to tour the South visiting relevant War sites and interviewing the Confederate descendants that kept that cause's heritage alive. Horwitz's has an amazing gift for storytelling and it shines through in this book. He has an uncanny ability to come across mundanely interesting characters in his travels and to write their stories with an original verve.

The book is also balanced. Although he is a Yankee, Horwitz's affinity for the Rebels is evident. But he checks that affinity with a good dose of history and reality. He conveys the notion that the South's resentment of the North is not wholly unjustified, but actually often well placed. At the same time, though, he illustrates the willful naivete that makes Gods of Confederate generals and that forgets the Old South's uglier sides. Horwitz manages to do all this while highlighting not just the tragic, but also the fun and curious stories of the Civil War and its remnants today.

Every American should strive to learn a bit more about the War, and this is a great place to start. It's a fun, touching read that demonstrates why that chapter in our history is still important-and indeed still with us-today.

Ran outta gas
This book started strong, keeping me rapt, but dragged at the end. Unlike a lot of the previous reviewers, I thought the emphasis on reënactment was rather dull. More interesting were Horwitz's conversations with Shelby Foote and Lee Collins, the HPA president in Atlanta. Collins made a great point when he said the Stars and Stripes flew over slavery for 80 years, while the battle flag never did. I also disagree with other Southerners that this book was totally biased. Sure it was written by a bleeding-heart Yankee, but I thought he did a fairly good job of keeping his personal views quiet, with a few notable exceptions.

I must warn Yankees, however, that this book doesn't really give a great example of what you should expect to encounter when you come to the South. Yes, Southerners take pride in being Southern and honor their Confederate heroes, but it's not as immediate a concern to most people as Horwitz would have you believe. Southerners mainly just don't like always being portrayed by the Northern media as rednecks and racists, when the North has just as many of both. Often this is why we hold dear our Confederate heritage as a kind of fraternal solidarity-bloc to fend off Northern bias.

All in All, good read...in short, you won't put it down before you're done.

Horwitz is one of the best journalists in the country
let me begin this review by saying that I am somewhat of a Civil War aficionado. Having said that, no other book that I have read has bridged the ap between the Civil War and the present as well as Tony Horwitz's CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC.

Horwitz, whose national reporting and war correspondence I have admired in the Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker, is once again in top form. The urbanity and sophistication of those two periodicals contrasts nicely with the rural south he reports on in this book. After moving to Virginia and meeting local Civil War reenactors, be takes a two year-long Odyssey through fourteen southern states to explore the legacy of the Civil War. William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor combined could not have created such a menegerie of bizarre southern gothic characters.

On his voyage, he encounters Civil War reenactors so "hardcore" that their wives have left them. He encounters hate groups, explores the Confederate Flag controversey, investigates a racially motivated murder, ends up waist-deep in Confedeate kitch, and wanders into a meeting of the "children of the confederacy" eerily reminiscent of a Hitler-youth group.

This book appeals to both northerners and southerners, because it accomplishes te seemingly contradictory tasks of appreciating southern heritage while satirizing the southerners who have not yet forgiven the "Yankees" for destroying their newly formed Confederacy. The names of the chapters "At the Foote of the master," "The Civil Wargasm," and "Gone With the Window" show how the author keeps a satirical tone while appreciating the legacy of the Civil War. This book is an incredible piece of scholarship and journalism.