Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz

Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz

NATIONAL BESTSELLER. A Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent takes us on an explosive adventure into the soul of the unvanquished South, where Civil War reenactors, battlefield visitors, and fans of history resurrect the ghosts of the Lost Cause through ritual and remembrance.

"The freshest book about divisiveness in America that I have read in some time. This splendid commemoration of the war and its legacy ... is an eyes-open, humorously no-nonsense survey of complicated Americans."-The New York Times Book Review

For all who remain intrigued by the legacy of the Civil War-reenactors, battlefield visitors, Confederate descendants and other Southerners, history fans, students of current racial conflicts, and more-this ten-state adventure is part travelogue, part social commentary and always good-humored.

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.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 the new 'classrooms, courts, country bars' where the past and the present collide, often in explosive ways.

Tony Horwitz was a graduate of Brown University and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. He was a native of Washington, D.C. He spent a decade as a newspaper correspondent in the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, primarily reporting conflicts and violence for The Wall Street Journal. When he returned to the United States, he earned the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting and worked for The New Yorker before deciding to pursue writing full-time. Confederates in the Attic, Blue Latitudes, Baghdad Without a Map, and A Journey Long and Weird are among his national and New York Times bestsellers. In 2011, the New York Times designated Midnight Rising a Notable Book, and Library Journal named it one of the top ten books of the year.

Tony was also the president of the Society of American Historians and a fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Center for Advanced Study. His wife Geraldine Brooks and their two kids Nathaniel and Bizu survive him. He died in May 2019.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780679758334
ISBN 10	067975833X
Title	Confederates in the Attic
Author	Tony Horwitz
Series	Vintage Departures Ser
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	1999-02-22
Number of pages	432
Prizes	Winner of Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize (Nonfiction) 1999
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.