Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

Name: Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War
SKU: 123157
Availability: InStock

4.5 | 1,904 ratings

Price: 19.69

Last update: 12-26-2024

About this item

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.

Joe S.

Good book

Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2024

Both eye opening and fun at same time. I enjoy reading this a lot.

Old Jarhead

Good prolonged road trip story, but drags at times

Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2021

Me. Horwitz covers the multifaceted Southern mindset of attitudes about the War of Southern Rebellion. I think his efforts reveal interesting and informative things and people, but overall, there are stretches in the book that drag on and on with little reward in the end. I think his work about “Rediscovering the New World - A Long Strange Story,” a later work, is comparatively fabulous, a flowing read and although it is another prolonged road trip, riding along with him was worth it. It's amazing how much history we accept as ‘real,’ isn't.

DKM75

Great read!

Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2024

Had to order a copy for myself, it's such a great read. I went with used, came quickly & in really nice shape. Every Tony Horwitz book I've read has been great!

Joe O'Donnell

An absolutely terrific read, (even 20 +years later.)

Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2017

My late brother moved to Maryland (from Vermont) back in the early '90's. He gave me a copy of this book while on a visit "home" some years later. Being a "Yankee," (even worse, being brought up in Canada,) I had little understanding of the depth of feeling that many Southerners had (and still have) to the "Lost Cause" that was the Civil War. I let it sit on my bookshelf for quite a while, the subject of Civil War re-enactors was of little interest to yours truly, ( I likened it to grown men playing "Cowboys and Indians,) then I picked it up. I remember devouring the book in about two days, back in 1996 or '97- it was a terrific read. I loaned it to someone, and never got it back.
I got to thinking about the book after the horrific church shooting in Charleston, S.C. a few years back. That, along with the historic Obama Presidency (though I was never was a fan or supporter of his ) made me think of all the progress we've made as a Nation, but all the hard work left to do. An acquaintance, who has Southern roots, and spent much of his life as a professor at a "historically Black college," remembered the book and the author-I ordered it the next day. I read it much more slowly this time, savoring the atmosphere and Horwitz's story telling. The funny stuff is just as funny, the narrative just as compelling, and the book is, perhaps, even more poignant in it's observations, given the current climate.What with the ongoing, perhaps never-ending debates over the Confederate flag, and the dismantling of Confederate memorials all over the South, I've come to the conclusion that I will be able to re-read this excellent account twenty years from now, and the Civil War (or War Between the States,) will still be "unfinished."

Cynthia K. Robertson

Very informative and very amusing...

Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2004

Millions of words have been written about the Civil War, but Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Tony Horwitz, provides some refreshing insights in Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. Traveling through ten different states, Horwitz sets out to answer several ageold questions about The Civil War (or The Late Great Unpleasantness or The War of Northern Aggression-depending on which side you're on). But first and foremost, why can't Southerners put the Civil War behind them? Why do so many of them insist on living in the past? Each chapter is written from a different state and they are informative, disturbing, poignant, and often downright hysterical. Just the chapter names are amusing including "At the Foote of the Master" (about expert Shelby Foote), "Gone With the Window" (about Atlanta's continuing obsession with Gone With the Wind), and "The Oldest Confederate Widow Tells Some."
Horwitz traipses through battlefields, camps with re-enactors, seeks out little-known stories, and checks out dusty museums and personal collections. He also talks with dozens of people (both Civil War experts and simple folk) about such topics as slavery, The Daughters of the Confederacy, the Confederate flag controversy, Civil Rights, prisoner of war camps, The Ku Klux Klan, and various Civil War luminaries.
The most enjoyable parts of the book involve Horwitz tagging along with some hardcore re-enactors. His romantic vision of a cozy re-enactment weekend (complete with camp fire, hardy stew and good camaraderie) is quickly burst when he's made to remove or discard almost everything he has including his clothes, eyeglasses and food (they're not vintage 1860's). Also, Confederate re-enactors tend to constantly starve themselves to obtain the appearance of emaciated Southern soldiers. Some hardcores even go so far as to soak uniform buttons in urine to achieve the correct "patina." This sounds more like work than fun.
Horwitz definitely provides us with some new material, interesting observations, and refreshing insights. In fact, I enjoyed it enough after reading it that I purchased the unabridged book on tape so that my husband and I could listen to it while traveling. I can't think of too many nonfiction books that I've enjoyed more!

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