March 1, 1999
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
March 2, 1998
The first book the author's Russian grandfather bought on emigrating to the U.S., though he neither read nor spoke English, was about the Civil War, a book he still pored over into his 90s. And when Horwitz was a child, his father read him tales of the Civil War instead of fairy tales and children's literature. The powerful hold of that conflict on a diverse assortment of Americans translates into more than 60,000 books on the subject, according to the author; for some Civil War buffs it is an obsession that generates a startling number of clubs whose members regularly reenact the battles, playing out once again the logistics, problems, hardships, leading characters, losses and victories. Horwitz (Baghdad Without a Map), on a year-long exploration of these groups throughout the South, participated in some of their activities and came to know the lives and personalities of several of their members. His vivid, personal account is a mesmerizing review of history from a novel and entertaining angle.