Confederates in the Attic

Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The writing was good, though the blurbs on the cover refer to humor and hilarious and I really didn't see much of that. The events took place well over 20 years ago and in my travels and stays in the South I cannot say that the almost fanatical attachment to the Civil War has not been evident to me. Is there remembrance and pride in the Confederacy? Yes. Is there commemoration of the actions of ancestors and heroes? Yes. But the family roots and connections are very different in the South than in the North. It is only in recent years that genetic testing and subscriptions to place like Ancestry. com have proliferated in other regions of the country. In the South those connections for the most part are already known and need not be searched for. BTW, I, too, like Horowitz as a kid considered myself a Johnny Reb and got my hat when we visited Gettysburg as a family when I was about 9. Even at that young age, looking down and across the field from Cemetery Ridge wondered what the Rebs had for brains when they tried Pickett's March. I also looking across the fields to see if the flag was flying at Dwight Eisenhower's place--if it was it meant Ike was there.
An interesting but very repetitive book and it took ages to get through it. I almost gave up several times but having visited so many of the battle sites and studied the War fairly often, I forced myself on the Wargasm, but there are other books I've read on the subject that were livelier.

View all my reviews