were parts of this book where the ethnography shined and I really enjoyed hearing Tony Horwitz's perspective, Then there was the otherof the book where Horwitz tried and tried and tried to make this random man from thes relevant,
STOP TRYING TO MAKE OLMSTEAD HAPPEN! IT'S NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN!
Mr, Olmstead I forget his first name was the man who designed Central Park, But, like most famous or influential people from preand honestly still now HE WAS JUST A MEDIOCRE WHITE GUY WHO GOT UNDESERVED OPPORTUNITIES FOR SUCCESS, The entire book is based around Horwitz recreating Olmstead's adventures through the southern United States, But at its core this is a bad idea, I cannot rate this book higher thanstar or recommend to anyone, There is MUCH BETTER nonfiction ethnography based books out there, NEXT! This was a terrific book and I am so sorry that it was his last, I love travel books like "Travels with Charley" by Steinbeck and "Blue Highways" by William Heat Moon and this book was similar to those, However the addition of his travels tracing the journey made by Frederick Law Olmsted as an undercover correspondent for the New York Tmesyears previously made a wonderful contrast and added a lot of history.
I learned a lot as an armchair traveler! I fortunately still have books to read by Mr Horwitz and I look forward to them, My heart wants to give this bookbecause it had only just been published when Tony Horwitz died unexpectedly last year, but I'll try to put my sentimental feelings to one side and comment on the books's actual contents.
As you'd expect from Horwitz, this is part travelogue, part history lesson, and part social commentary, in this case focused on his attempts to retrace the journeys of Central Park landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.
In thes, Olmsted made a series of journeys across the US South, describing what he saw in a series of letters published in the New York Times in the rather optimistic hope that his nonpartisan firsthand reporting would "promote the mutual understanding of North and South".
Sections of this are highly amusing, such as Horwitz's illfated mule expedition in Texas Hill Country, or his experiences at the 'Louisiana Mudfest' a family festival of ATVs, mud, and moonshine.
Others are more reflective and somber I was particularly struck by a passage about Angola, the country's largest maximumsecurity prison "a plantation that still relied on forced labor, much of it performed by the descendants of slaves.
", and by Horwitz's visit to Colfax, Louisiana, whose cemetary contains a monument to three "heroes" who fell "fighting for white supremacy" in a vicious massacre of black men that the official state historical marker still labels a "Riot" which "marked the end of carpetbag misrule".
Although I've mentioned Louisiana repeatedly, much of the book focuses on Texas, an area that even in Olmsted's time was "a crucible of the nation's escalating conflicts: over immigration, gun rights, religion, the environment, and other hotbutton issues.
"
I did thoroughly enjoy reading this book, but perhaps because I came to it with greater prior knowledge of the US and its history it didn't have as much impact on me as sitelinkConfederates in the Attic.
Here's a sitelinkblog post I wrote after Tony Horwitz's death about the way that book shaped my thinking, I cannot recommend this journalist's books highly enough, There's a lot of details in this one, but the way he blends his parallel travels through the South/Southwest to Olmsted's in the midth century is fascinating.
His insights reveal a lot about what has and hasn't changed regarding culture, class, race, geography, climate, Not elitist in the least well, not VERY Tony Horwitz R, I. P.deserves to be on every serious U,
S. historian's reading list. America lost something great when Tony Horowitz died in May, When you read this book, you are made painfully aware of that fact, Horowitz possessed not only ability to get people to talk to and with him, but also to capture them on the page, Reading this book, you realize how rare and powerful that skill is,
Spying on the South is on one level a recreation of Frederick Olmsteads journey to report on the South prior to the Civil War, Much of it was done during theelection, and, therefore, the book also shows the divided country,
His journey starts on Amtraks Capitol limited which follows the old BampO route, The reader is quickly treated to a wonderful conversation with Donald Handy, a salesman who not only is a good salesman but also compares writing to his work.
In West Virginia, Horowitz examines the coal industry, and how coal, or perhaps the memory of coal, still runs the state, He includes as well the men who run the ships who move the coal, What Horowitz does in the book is capture what people say and think, but with a minimum of judgement, This is perfectly done in the section about coal where Horowitz represents the declining coal industry as well as the desperation of those who used to work in.
The great thing about Horowitz is that he is able to change the stereotype that many people have of the South and of the North because he represents the North.
He shows us a West Virginian who points out that coal is a legacy of exploitation and is a class issue, He is upset and worried that his state is ruled by coal, that in some ways they have given up their independence, There are Texans who point out the those at the Alamo were the illegal immigrants of their day and that it is something we should remember,
His evenhanded approach is so prevalent that when the word bigoted is used to describe someones rhetoric, it stands out, It makes the description more powerful because it is used so sparingly,
One of the most interesting and telling aspects of Horowitzs trip is when he boards the American Queen, a tourist cruise boat that goes down the Mississippi river.
The cruise includes day trips to plantations and most strangely, disturbingly to Angola Prison, The reflection of how many, not all but many, of the stops gloss over slavery as well as the sense of a caste system on the boat take up much of this section and raise some very good points about how we cover history.
This conflict about reality and history also includes forgotten massacres that are remembered but not really, including people in Texas who were actually proUnion and killed for it during the Civil War.
When you reach the end of this book, you are left wishing Horowitz was still alive to write more because while he records the bad, he also records the good and that gives us hope.
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