Tony HorwitzBesprekingen

I was very sorry to learn of the death of the author when I went to check this book out. His confederates in the attic was a revelation to me and I enjoyed voyage long and strange, midnight rising and blue latitudes as well.
This time he is tracing the journeys of Frederick Olmsted in the south. It was interesting and I learned a few things ( the patron Saint of drug dealers, for instance.)
Horwitz does a good job of trying to elucidate why seemingly normal people come to have some fairly extreme views, though it’s not as stark and surprising as confederates was

very interesting. I have enjoyed several other books by this author which belnded the past and the present and had a considerable amount of humorous content. This one stays firmly in the past , and there is very little to laugh at, but a lot to learn,. Brings history alive

loved this book. Horwitz exposes me to people I probably wouldn't otherwise encounter, like the "aryan" civil war freaks in his other book, the new zelanders who use the swastika symbol apall and fascinate at the same time. How do people come to think and act this way.. the book has some answers. But don't get the wrong idea, mostly it is equal parts humor and history lesson and all fun

Fabulous book. I've always wondered about Brown, who seemed like a first class wing nut. And there's no doubt he wasn't entirely mentally stable. But if you want some idea of how he got to Harpers Ferry, this book will help. Horwitz also accurately places him in historical context. Wonderful book!

Couldn't put this down. Horowitz has an engrossing narrative style and really makes all of his interactions come alive,especially the hardcore reenactors.

I found the Children of the Confederacy horrifying. But I came away with a better understanding of the place the Lost Cause has in southerners' memories.

Very good NF about how Civil War has not really ended in the South.

If you knew nothing about Americans south of the Mason-Dixon Line and Tony Horwitz’ “Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide” was your introduction to these peoples, you’d probably conclude that southerners revel in their ignorance, relish the most juvenile forms of entertainment, and stuff themselves with the worst food and beverages on the planet.

Was Horwitz really “spying on the South?”

Yup. But for whom was he spying and why?

Ostensibly, the narrative runs along two tracks:

1. Along the first track we are reading the history of Frederick Law Olmsted who as a young man made two lengthy trips to the South for this very purpose. He was writing for then new New York Daily Times about a decade or so before the Civil War tore the country apart. His dispatches were later collected into three books.

2. The second narrative is a satire of the first in which Horwitz follows the earlier journey using mostly modern travel methods to reenact Olmsted’s earlier journey. He later mounts a mule to reenact Olmsted’s journey, a segment in which it goes something like this: Mule 10, Horwitz 0.

The significance of Olmsted’s trek was that the landscapes and flora he found informed or perhaps inspired his later work as America’s first professional landscape architect. He designed New York’s Central Park, Montreal’s Mont Royal, and the capacious Biltmore estate in North Carolina among many others.

Olmsted was a virulent anti-slaver, a “free-soiler” in the parlance of the time. He graphically documented conditions on the plantations. To his credit, Horwitz fills out Olmstead’s observations and the local history after Olmsted went home.

For me the most interesting discussion was the history of freethinking German settlers to Texas. Mexico outlawed slavery before Texans declared their independence. For years land speculators and cotton growers had been flooding into the territory to expand the land under cultivation, as cotton was a tremendously profitable business at the time.

Texans later voted to join the United States as a slave state.

This didn’t sit well with the industrious Germans and Alsatians who legally immigrated to West Texas. But sympathies in the state were largely pro-slavery and though some fought a rearguard action during the Civil War to undermine the Confederate cause, most clammed up and kept their opinions to themselves.

Olmsted not only sympathized with the freethinkers, he promoted their cause once he returned to New York.

Horwitz obviously also sympathizes with the sympathizer and this is where the two stories cross. Because in America today all is not finished between the races. There is the matter of racial profiling. Gerrymandered voting districts. Voter ID cards. Belligerent immigration policy. Pandering to white supremacists. Racially-motivated shooting sprees.

Need I go on?

Horwitz sheds light on and helps correct the score where early Texans stood on the matter of personal freedoms and notes the layers of irony for today’s Texans who go on ad-nauseam about how little they want Washington to interfere with their personal freedoms. Ditto with Louisianans. And West Virginians.

My own readers will roll their eyes as I repeat my observation about how the very people who complain about their personal freedoms being jeopardized with attacks on the Second Amendment right to bear arms vote against anybody who believes women ought to have final say about processes in their own bodies.

Once the Civil War broke out Olmsted took a very active role in prosecuting the war for the Union. He was undoubtedly one of the unsung heroes behind the lines.

And his park designs inspire us to this day, making cities more liveable and encouraging better behaviour among its warring factions.

Tony, thank you for this entertaining look at America today.

RIP.

An excellent history of John Brown and the significance of his raid on American history, especially in regards to the Civil War. Horowitz is an excellent author that brings the people and their stories to the readers in a gripping manner. This isn't dry history. It's alive and will grasp your attention with a thirst for more.

Not what I was expecting, and I usually shy away from the journalistic travel memoir, but I was pleasantly surprised. Mainly because Horwitz gets his history quite right, researches deeply, and even discusses scholarly disagreements and controversies. His "Note on Sources" is scholarly, thorough, and interesting. I knew of most of these pre-Pilgrim voyages, as I teach U.S. history, but it was good to read this account. I learned more about the Vikings particularly. Good maps, but I wish that there were more images (I usually do). And he didn't address (except a passing reference) the Spanish settlement in Virginia called Ajacán and the intriguing (and unlikely theory) that Opechancanough was Don Luis (a.k.a. Paquiquino). Look it up.½

A smart, well-researched book that blends history and travel narrative to tell the story of the first century of European exploration in the New World. (Also, Vikings.) As usual, Horwitz excels not only at delivering sensitive readings of American history, but at sussing out what the past has come to mean for people today. (Which is to say, get ready for some weirdo fraternal and lineage organizations, folks.)

For purposes of producing a readable work of popular nonfiction, Horwitz focuses on narrative rather than analysis and provides limited context for European exploration and Native resistance/accommodation. This book is not a survey: I will have to find some other book to tell me about the first North American slave revolt or the failed Spanish mission that preceded Jamestown. I did sometimes feel the lack of these episodes - it's important to remember that for every surviving narrative of American exploration, there are a half-dozen failures that barely made it to the historical record.

A satisfying kickoff to my current reading project, All of Southeastern History, Semi-Decolonized, in Chronological Order: Lazy Reader's Edition. Next stop, Tsenacommacah!

I really enjoyed this book. Although a fair bit of it was rather frightening, particularly the divisiveness of race still prevalent in much of the southern US, there were small pieces of hope for the future of people learning to live with each other now and not living only in the past.

Really interesting subject told in a very nontraditional method. Loved it.

A look at what was going on in North America during the 100 years between Columbus and the Pilgrims. It's heavy on the conquistadors, which is fair because that's who was mucking around in North America at that time. What really makes it a good read is how the author always brings it back to the now, showing us what became of these invaded/explored areas and what modern residents think about their local history.

Interesting and sometimes entertaining.

revised edition

Excellent details on the early explorers and settlers in America. Very interesting and I recommend this.

Another great Horowitz adventure! I couldn't resist reading, and I am glad I did.

Another great Horowitz adventure! I couldn't resist reading, and I am glad I did.

Landscape architect Olmstead toured the south and west in 1850 period. The author followed the path in 2018.
His book compares the mores and folkways of then and now. It also explores the thinking of people then and now, economic and political.
A good book about politics and history.

The book starts with the author's own childhood love of the civil war, which was sparked by older relatives, especially his father. Horwitz declares his love of the rebel army, a love forged by their very rebelliousness, mixed with a draw to the underdog. I followed the narrative of this interest willingly, but I noticed a decided lack of comment on the slavery aspect until much farther into the book. In fact, he doesn't seem to touch on the thorny issue of how people can continue to love the confederacy when it was defined by slavery until more than halfway through:

"Rob's comments raised a question I'd been chewing on since the start of my trip. Was there such a thing as politically correct remembrance of the Confederacy? Or was any attempt to honor the cause inevitably tainted by what Southerners once delicately referred to as their 'peculiar institution'?" (page 239 of 386)

It does become central to the ideas he's trying to present, but I felt it should have been present from, if not the start, at least a lot sooner, especially since he had obviously been thinking about it.

Regardless, this was an interesting attempt to portray the issues at the heart of a clash that's still on-going.

This book does not wear well in 2020, after 22 years, unfortunately. The author's admittedly Northern liberal perspective (the title says it all: if you don't get it, Google "Toys in the attic meaning") paints white Southerners as, at best eccentric and at worst, knuckle dragging redneck racists. Horwitz mocks their concerns for the nation's future, but in 2020, the summer of Burn, Loot and Murder proves that the white Southerners were right, and Horwitz was wrong.

But Horwitz is a great story teller and the battlefield visits and especially the reenactment stories are well worth the read. Horwitz passed away last year, but I imagine he would have made a public statement today against the complete insanity of demanding the removal of Confederate statues, not just from public spaces, but from the battlefields themselves.

Certainly of its time.

Learned a great deal about John Brown and the Harper's Ferry raid that I didn't previously know, especially the extent to which leading northerners supported him.

Nokkuð skemmtileg umfjöllun um vopnaða baráttu Johns Brown gegn þrælahaldi í Suðurríkjunum áður en sjálft þrælastríðið hófst. Raunar gefur titill bókarinnar til kynna að árás Browns og gíslataka í Harpers Ferry í Vestur-Virginíu hafi átt þátt í að kveikja í ófriðarbálinu. Mér finnst það full djúpt í árinni tekið en vissulega var þessi árás ein af aðalorsökum þess að deilurnar á milli Norður- og Suðurríkjanna hörnuðu svo að ekki varð aftur snúið.
Einn megin kostur bókarinnar er hve ferill Browns og manna hans er rakinn, breyskur öfgamaður og ofsatrúar sem þó var svo öflugur leiðtogi að hann gat dregið hóp manna í feigðarflan og síðan höfðað til mun fleiri með orðum sínum er hann beið aftöku sinnar.

We have lost a great interpreter of the relationship between past and present. Sadly, Tony Horowitz died of a heart attack on Monday, May 27th, 2019 in Chevy Chase, MD. Your fans will miss your wit, insights, and your ability to interpret the stranger parts of America in a kind and humorous way.

Through his many books, Tony told fascinating stories that mixed humor with social criticism. Although this book was somewhat uneven in places (especially Louisiana), his trip down the Ohio was fascinating, while the trip down the Mississippi was somewhat less so. Nevertheless, Horowitz’s premise of following in the steps of Frederick Law Olmstead, whose pre-Civil War trip he retraces, is a fine idea. And it reminds us again of what a prolific and fine landscape architect Olmstead was. The beauty of this book is in the interweaving of Olmstead’s work and the legacy that he left for everyone who has the pleasure of exploring his love of nature.

The book also shares some similarities with Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi and Jonathan Raban’s Old Glory: An American Voyage.

Thoroughly enjoyable. What could be better than laughing while learning history. Thank you, Tony Horwitz!