About this title: A portrait of Civil War societies and the amateur historians who populate them throughout the South. Horwitz, the grandson of Russian immigrants who were obsessed with the conflict, spent a year visiting such societies to piece together his account. A "New York Times" Notable Book for 1998.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Acceptable. Former Library book. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780679758334ISBN:067975833X
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. As new. No edgewear, markings or creasing. Pages bright and tight. Appears unread. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 432 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Near Fine. Trade Paperback. Vintage, 1999. Near Fine Book. Aside from toning to the book and a few front pages with wrinkling, overall a clean and tight, lightly read copy. Media mail packed in protective bubble lined shipping bags, Priority in a Flat Rate Envelope. Shipped quickly. Prompt response to questions. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2/22/1999
ISBN-13:9780679758334ISBN:067975833X
Description: Good. 067975833X PB1B. Solid but well-worn copy. Binding tight and square. Text clean. Previous moistuire makes 30 pages slightly crinkly; no mildew. read more
Edition: 4th printing
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books; Vintage Departures Ser., New York
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780679758334ISBN:067975833X
Description: Very Good. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. ix, 406 pp., 1 map, index; 21 cm. Tight, clean copy. Browning. "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 ... read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 1999-02-22
ISBN-13:9780679758334ISBN:067975833X
Description: Like New. Like new softcover in excellent condition, no writing, non-smoking home, clean text, binding tight, Christian business. read more
Binding: Audio Cassette
Publisher: Random House Audio
Date Published: 1999-03-02
ISBN-13:9780553525830ISBN:0553525832
Description: Very Good. FOUR FINE ABRIDGED AUDIO CASSETTES IN X/LIBRARY CLAMSHELL CASE. SIX HOURS OF LISTENING TIME, NARRATED BY MICHAEL BECK. DAILY SHIPPING. read more
"I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this book. There just aren't words for it. It's a fascinating look at how the Civil War still affects life across the South, and Horwitz finds himself interviewing the most colorful of characters, from a hardcore Confederate re-enactor obsessed with every bit of his outfit being perfectly precise, down to the bacon grease stains on his worn butternut trousers, to a woman so enamored of her membership in the Daughters of the Confederacy that she's started up a group for her feline companions called the Cats of the Confederacy. Like Horwitz, I was raised in Virginia, and like him too, my family is too new to the country to have ancestors who fought in that war. And being raised in Virginia, my parents filled my childhood with trips to every Civil War battlefield within a day's trip of our home. Added to the fact that my parents are originally from states that fought on the side of the Union, I have no deep, unrelenting ties to the South and for all it stood for in the War. Reading about the folks that Horwitz encountered throughout his years in the South really opened my eyes to how important that war is to many people, even 145 years after the fact.
Horwitz's writing is so fresh and engaging. I expected it to be somewhat dry, but instead it was like Horwitz was sitting in my living room, telling me these great stories of the people he'd met, the placed he'd seen, and the subsequent research he had done. I was absolutely fascinated from page one, and I would recommend this book to everyone."
"Any amateur historian of the American Civil War (or War Between the States, or War of Northern Aggression, etc. etc.) would be well-served to pick up Tony Horwitz's wonderful Confederates in the Attic, a thorough examination of the effects the war still has on the American south today. Horwitz's voice is genial and trustworthy, a necessary counterpoint to the heavy topics explored in the book: racism, the commoditization of an ill-remembered history, the desire for authenticity in a world largely devoid of it.
A detailed knowledge of the American Civil War is by no means a prerequisite to enjoying the book. In fact, given that the book places the war in a modern perspective (after all, "we may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us"), it serves as an excellent starting point for someone beginning to take a serious interest in the war. I know very little of military movements, dates, and even names associated with the most important war in American history. And yet I now find myself Googling Stonewall Jackson's horse and adding Civil War historical fiction to my Amazon wish-list at an alarming rate. Horwitz's enthusiasm for his subject is infectious. It's books like this that we should be sharing with the young people in our country burned out on rote memorization and Hollywood nonsense.
The only (minor) complaint in an otherwise tremendous effort would be the closing chapter of the book. For all of the well-considered theses and perspectives that Horwitz shares in the book, the end leaves the reader a little helpless. There is no overarching theory to hold the book together, no all-encompassing perspective one can use to make sense of the war and its enduring effect on America. This helps the beginning chapters (where he appears willing to entertain all perspectives on the war), but is a little confounding by the book's conclusion, at least for the reader expecting a big finish.
Horwitz hangs his kepi and walks away from it, at least for a time. But the people he meets throughout the book seem incapable of this distance and it's frustrating to accept the book cannot have a clear conclusion. Horwitz appears acquiescent that the differences are irreconcilable ("You wear your X, I'll wear mine", e.g.).
Expecting a book to resolve generations of conflict over a war whose wounds are still felt is, of course, unrealistic. Perhaps reluctant acquiescence to the differences is the only reaction."
"A reporter who spent time in Bosnia and Iraq decides to take a trip through the American South and see why it just can't get over its own Civil War.
The book's just plain funny, with re-enactors who smother themselves with bacon grease and practice rigorous weight-loss regimes to perfect that starved soldier look, with rabid protesters who sing "We Shall Overcome" and pump clenched fists in the air to fight for the Confederate flag, with "neo-Confederates" who train and drill their children for the next coming of the Confederate States of America. You know, just an endless parade of crazies.
It helps that the first crazies he looks at, and some of the craziest crazies, come from Salisbury, North Carolina, my mom's home town. Charleston also comes in for its share of ribbing.
The nutjobs do sometimes seem to blur together, and sometimes he spends too much time just relating some of the well-known facts about the war, but overall, despite its focus on the fringes, it is a fairly even-handed look at the modern South.
And he's right, people in the South just won't ever forget that war."
"As a great-great grandson of a flag bearer for the South at Shiloh and Chickamauga, the Civil War (War Between the States), along with Lincoln, has been a personal interest for many years. But in my reading, I've always read "through" Northern eyes. My 4X great grandfather was an active abolitionist who harbored runaway slaves as well as helped freed blacks with money and land.
Tony has become one of my favorite authors by this book. He too has had an interest in the War through his father and grandfather, an Eastern European Jew.
Tony begins by visiting Ft. Sumter and talking with the African American guide, spends time with re-inactors, goes on a "Civil Wargasm"in period clothes with a new friend checking off sites along the way. He then goes to the South to find that relations between the races have gone in the wrong direction, at least in 1995 when he was writing the book.
Overall, this is an informative as well as entertaining read. He has written books on his travels in the steps of Captain Cook and an exploration of the American 16th century that we know little about. I have both books and I'm ready to accompany him any time."
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