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.
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Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780307763013
Publisert
2016
Utgiver
Random House Digital Inc.
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter