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Title details for Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz - Wait list

Confederates in the Attic

Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

by Tony Horwitz
Arthur Addison
Audiobook
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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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 19, 2013

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780553397666
      • File size: 452629 KB
      • Duration: 15:42:58

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      In this lively and entertaining tour of the South's enduring obsession with the Confederacy, Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and war correspondent, has written a book ideal for audio listening. Like MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL, a book that it superficially resembles, Horwitz's story plays on the tension between past and present--the South in its genteel older traditions and the South that has become as Kmarted and homogenized as the rest of America. Addison's unaccented reading does justice to Horwitz's reporting skill and to his rich and imaginative prose. But it is less effective in conveying the regional character of the various Civil War reenactors, trivia buffs and true devotees who make up his story--a story whose earnest and sentimental heart is wrapped, like so much of the South itself, in ironies and incongruities. D.A.W. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine
    • AudioFile Magazine
      Horwitz uses an immigrant ancestor's fascination with the Civil War as a springboard to explore why this greatest of American Olympiads still touches us with such deep fervor. Beck's reading of this abridgment is done with a unique and contagious enthusiasm. Much of the work is dialogue as people tell why they are so engrossed by the war. Beck is adept at expressing the speaker's character, bringing out the humor, and irony, that is in many of these situations. Southern accents are credible, although all of the Southern women tend to sound alike. All in all, a nice performance of a fascinating work. M.T.F. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 1, 1999
      Horowitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign war correspondent, returned to his native U.S. turf to tackle the subject of our own Civil War and how its history is actively replayed by scores of grown men. He spent time among the hard-core buffs, the groups who put on period clothes and "re-enact" battles. As part of a self-imposed year-long "scheme" to examine the war's contemporary meaning, he does such things as visit a birthday party for Gen. Stonewall Jackson given by the Sons of the Confederacy. He also mulls over his own theories about the lasting legacy of the war, arguing that it was as much a cultural battle between the mores of North and South as a military one. Horowitz's rambling first-person narrative takes constant sidetracks and is made human with its self-effacing descriptions of his own foibles. This is why it works effectively as audio: it comes across more as a personal adventure than a polemical historical analysis. Though the author tells of being a Civil War buff since childhood, he nonetheless retains the freshness of an outsider's perspective (acting as a sort of foreign correspondent at home). Seasoned audio narrator Beck tries to convey this sense of freshness and boyish enthusiasm in his

    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 2, 1998
      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.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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