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.


Horwitz is one of the best journalists in the country   May 1, 2000
 40 out of 48 found this review helpful

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.


Explains to the Yankee diaspora our empathy with the War   October 27, 1999
 40 out of 52 found this review helpful

It often takes an outsider to sweep through the south and paint an accurate picture of its citizens. V.S. Naipal did that in "A Turn in the South". Tony Horwitz does that with his book.

We southerners are tired of being branded anachronistic racists when we honor our confederate battle flag and our ancestors who fought in the war. (My ancestors fought for the confederacy and the American revolution too.)

Mr. Horwitz takes the most difficult task of explaining to the bewildered people of, say, San Francisco why southerners still honor the civil war dead. He does this as a non-partisan by stander whose own ancestors were post-Civil-war Jewish immigrants to the North.

One notable chapter is the section on Shelby Foote. Poor Mr. Foote's early career as a novelist and his life-long literary scholarship has been overshadowed by his fame as a civil war scholar and commentator on the Ken Burns PBS Civil War series. I recommend his novel Shiloh as well as his correspondence with Walker Percy. Add Faulkner, Flannery O'Conner, and now Tony Horwitz and you might possible fathom our unique culture down south.

Bye yall.


Entertaining but Elitist   March 15, 2000
 28 out of 35 found this review helpful

First off, kudos to Horwitz for his talent at writing. It's breezy, fast paced and full of good turn-of-a-phrase writing that keeps the reader interested. Having said that, he still could have benefited from a bit of editing. Loping off 100 pages would have helped as the book did drag till the end.

I first found the book lively and engaging, but as I went deeper into its pages, I began to get an uneasy sense of Horwitz's prejudice. The emerging elitist tone of the book comes through and leaves the reader uncomfortable. He seems to use his pen as a brush that paints all Southerners as backwoods, racist, hillbilly rubes. In Confederates In the Attic, Horwitz has created a kind of reverse Amos and Andy for the 90s.

This would be a fun book to read if there wasn't such an undercurrent of meanness and intolerance in his writings. The worst moments come in the chapter "Dying For Dixie". In it, a young African-American male guns down a young white father of newborn twins solely because he had a rebel flag flying from his truck. Was anyone else disturbed by how Horwitz went out of his way to smear the reputation of the murdered man? How about Horwitz's sympathetic portrait of the killer? It's actually downright scary to read. It's the kind of "blame the victim" journalism that I doubt Horwitz would ever try on a rape victim.

On the flip side, Horwitz every now and then comes up with some penetrating insight. He made a brilliant observation that, like in 1861, we are once again wondering if America will remain one nation - that today we are losing our sense of a common people with common principles and starting to fracture along class, race and gender lines. If Horwitz had spent more time using his travels to expand on issues like this it would have made for a more powerful book. That and a little less disdain for the proletariat.


Ran outta gas   February 8, 2000
 20 out of 20 found this review helpful

This book started strong, keeping me rapt, but dragged at the end. Unlike a lot of the previous reviewers, I thought the emphasis on reenactment 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.