He didn’t expect the wide acceptance and positive reviews so quickly. Horwitz said he was pleasantly surprised when the book debuted. I threw away 75 percent of my reporting and focused on the best material.” I tried to find the right balance of history, humor, and hard-nosed reporting so that one element didn’t overwhelm the others. “As much as possible, I recounted my travels in the order they occurred, so that the reader experienced the South as I had. “I just dove in and let the material lead me through the narrative,” Horwitz said. Most of the book was firsthand reporting, and Horwitz said he didn’t have a well-defined process while writing his material-though it was more defined than his travels because his notes guided his writing. (Al Fenn/The Life Picture Collection via Getty Images)Īfter his approximately 18-month excursion, he spent what he called a “difficult year” deciphering his notes, reading, and conducting archival research. The reenactment shown here took place in May 1960 at a race track in New Jersey. I tried to hit certain historic landmarks, like Fort Sumter and Richmond and Vicksburg, but wasn’t rigid about this and spent a considerable amount of time in small communities I’d never heard of.” Civil War reenacting began to become much more popular at the time of the war’s centennial. “I set off with the general idea of exploring the contemporary landscape of the Civil War and then pretty much went where my encounters led me. Though the book is a seamless recollection of his travels weaved with the history of the sites, his research process for the book was to not have much of a process at all, he said. Juggling the opinions of Confederate descendants and their opponents, as well as his own perspective, Horwitz produced a journalistic story with humor and thought-provoking commentary. The book features Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, as the protagonist, navigating the South and along the way meeting a plethora of characters who share a vibrant passion for the Civil War, history, and Confederate culture.
Published in 1999, Confederates in the Attic was Horwitz’s answer to his boyhood passion for the Civil War. Revisiting Confederates in the Attic: An Interview with Tony Horwitz CloseĪmerica’s fascination with the Civil War may not have changed much since Tony Horwitz explored the South in Confederates in the Attic, but Horwitz said the way people are invested in the history has shifted.
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