Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

Horowitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign war correspondent, returned to his native U.S. turf to tackle the subject of our own Civil War and how its history is actively replayed by scores of grown men. He spent time among the hard-core buffs, the groups who put on period clothes and ""re-enact"" battles. As part of a self-imposed year-long ""scheme"" to examine the war's contemporary meaning, he does such things as visit a birthday party for Gen. Stonewall Jackson given by the Sons of the Confederacy. He also mulls over his own theories about the lasting legacy of the war, arguing that it was as much a cultural battle between the mores of North and South as a military one. Horowitz's rambling first-person narrative takes constant sidetracks and is made human with its self-effacing descriptions of his own foibles. This is why it works effectively as audio: it comes across more as a personal adventure than a polemical historical analysis. Though the author tells of being a Civil War buff since childhood, he nonetheless retains the freshness of an outsider's perspective (acting as a sort of foreign correspondent at home). Seasoned audio narrator Beck tries to convey this sense of freshness and boyish enthusiasm in his