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Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide Paperback – May 12, 2020
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With Spying on the South, the best-selling author of Confederates in the Attic returns to the South and the Civil War era for an epic adventure on the trail of America's greatest landscape architect. In the 1850s, the young Frederick Law Olmsted was adrift, a restless farmer and dreamer in search of a mission. He found it during an extraordinary journey, as an undercover correspondent in the South for the up-and-coming New York Times.
For the Connecticut Yankee, pen name "Yeoman," the South was alien, often hostile territory. Yet Olmsted traveled for 14 months, by horseback, steamboat, and stagecoach, seeking dialogue and common ground. His vivid dispatches about the lives and beliefs of Southerners were revelatory for readers of his day, and Yeoman's remarkable trek also reshaped the American landscape, as Olmsted sought to reform his own society by creating democratic spaces for the uplift of all. The result: Central Park and Olmsted's career as America's first and foremost landscape architect.
Tony Horwitz rediscovers Yeoman Olmsted amidst the discord and polarization of our own time. Is America still one country? In search of answers, and his own adventures, Horwitz follows Olmsted's tracks and often his mode of transport (including muleback): through Appalachia, down the Mississippi River, into bayou Louisiana, and across Texas to the contested Mexican borderland. Venturing far off beaten paths, Horwitz uncovers bracing vestiges and strange new mutations of the Cotton Kingdom. Horwitz's intrepid and often hilarious journey through an outsized American landscape is a masterpiece in the tradition of Great Plains, Bad Land, and the author's own classic, Confederates in the Attic.
- Print length512 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin Books
- Publication dateMay 12, 2020
- Dimensions5.47 x 1.03 x 8.41 inches
- ISBN-101101980303
- ISBN-13978-1101980309
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Timely . . . A valuable work that combines biography, history and travelogue. . . . Horwitz is a smooth writer and an even better reporter (hardly surprising, given that he won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting at The Wall Street Journal), and he recounts his travels with insight interspersed with humor, as well as with an intermittent raising of the eyebrows at numerous oddities and occasional evils.” —The New York Times Book Review
“In Horwitz’s writing, past and present collide and march together on almost every page, prying our minds open with the absurdity, hilarity and humanity we encounter. Olmsted spent nine months traveling 4,000 miles and then wrote hundreds of pages about it; Horwitz spent two years revisiting his paths, his ideas and his psyche, capturing the story in 414 pages of sparkling prose.” —David Blight, The Washington Post
“A compelling report on the state of our present disunion.” —Wall Street Journal
“I've been waiting for Tony Horwitz to write another big on-the-road book that crisscrosses the American cultural divide . . . Spying on the South is every bit as enlightening and alive with detail, absurdity and colorful characters as Confederates in the Attic was.” —NPR
“He was the rare historian—the only historian I can think of—equally at home in the archive and in an interview, a dedicated scholar, a devoted journalist.” —Jill Lepore, The New Yorker
“Horwitz’s excellence as a writer and reporter unearths forgotten chapters of history while making fascinating present-day discoveries.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Horwitz is an amiable narrator who marries a journalist’s knack for scene-setting and chatting folks up with the ability to tell a good historical tale.” —BookPage
“A tour is only as good as its guide, and Horwitz is a seasoned one—inquisitive, open-minded, and opting for observation over judgment, whether at a dive bar, monster truck rally, the Creation Museum, or a historical plantation. The book will appeal to fans of travelogue, Civil War–era history, and current events by way of Southern sensibilities.” —Booklist
“Horwitz brings humor, curiosity, and care to capturing the voices of the larger-than-life characters he encounters. A huge canvas of intricate details, this thoughtful and observant work delicately navigates the long shadow of America’s history.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“With the keen eye and deft pen that he's long brought to telling the odd and wonderful and fascinating story of America, Tony Horwitz has returned to familiar territory—the South—to give us a unique piece of reportage from a region that tells us a whole lot more about the country than the country sometimes wants to admit. Like his classic Confederates in the Attic, this book will be read, remembered, and treasured.” —Jon Meacham, Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian and author of The Soul of America
“Tony Horwitz’s reporting is fearless and persistent and inspired—and it produces views of America like no one else’s. Spying on the South kept me turning the pages to see what frightening and funny revelation was coming next. An important book for our almost unprecedented moment in history.” —Ian Frazier, author of Great Plains and Travels in Siberia
“In the long dark years before the Civil War, Frederick Law Olmsted toured the South by stage, by boat, by train, and by foot, reporting on a nation unraveling. Tony Horwitz does much more than follow in Olmsted’s footsteps in this searching travel narrative: he chronicles an American agony, the pain of division, the anguish of uncertainty. But he finds, too, an enduring American spirit of generosity, and commonweal, and curiosity.” —Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States
“Two journeys, a hundred and sixty years apart, remind us that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. In the midst of our country’s long-overdue reckoning with symbols of white supremacy, Tony Horwitz retraces the steps of America’s greatest landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, whose encounters with slavery forced him to rethink the role of civic spaces in the American experiment. Horwitz brings home a magnificent account of who we have been and what we might still become.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of Stony the Road
“Having grown up amidst the Emerald Necklace, having lived off the northern fringes of Central Park and later the western edge of its rangier cousin, Prospect, and having read Devil In the White City, I truly did not know there were any more astonishments left in the life of Frederick Law Olmsted. Leave it to the incomparable Tony Horwitz to reveal Olmsted’s secret life as a journalistic super-spy, peering not merely into the burgeoning Confederacy, but, as Horowitz poignantly observes, a cultural divide with which we are still reckoning.” —John Hodgman, author of Vacationland
“In the 1850s, Yankees saw the South as a foreign country and the New York Times sent Frederick Law Olmsted on an undercover mission to interpret it for readers. It was a daring and inspired move, and so is Tony Horwitz’s retracing of Olmsted’s path from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. Spoiler alert, things don’t always go well for our dauntless guide, but they sure do for the reader. This is one of the smartest, funniest, and most illuminating books about the South and Texas, and about our own divided times, I’ve had the pleasure to read.” —Bryan Burrough, author of Forget the Alamo and Days of Rage, The Big Rich and Public Enemies
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Penguin Books (May 12, 2020)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 512 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1101980303
- ISBN-13 : 978-1101980309
- Item Weight : 12.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.47 x 1.03 x 8.41 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #135,228 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #11 in General Southern US Travel Guides
- #20 in U.S. Abolition of Slavery History
- #198 in Travel Writing Reference
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Tony is a native of Washington, D.C., and a graduate of Brown University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He spent a decade overseas as a foreign correspondent, mainly covering wars and conflicts for The Wall Street Journal. After returning to the U.S., he won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting and wrote for The New Yorker before becoming a full-time author.
His books include the national and New York Times bestsellers, Confederates in the Attic, Blue Latitudes, Baghdad Without a Map and A Voyage Long and Strange. Midnight Rising, was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2011; one of the year’s ten best books by Library Journal; and won the 2012 William Henry Seward Award for Excellence in Civil War Biography. His latest, BOOM, is his first ebook, about a journey through the tar sands and along the route of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Tony has also been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and a visiting scholar at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. He lives with his wife, Geraldine Brooks, and their sons, Nathaniel and Bizu, on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book an engaging and entertaining read. They appreciate the author's enlightening content and well-written narrative. The humor is described as depreciating and humorous, making it a quirky and sad read. Overall, readers appreciate the insightful commentary on present-day America and the cultural description of the South.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers enjoy the book's engaging writing style and find it an interesting read about the life and work of Olmsted. They describe it as a great introduction to the history and travels of the author. The book provides an entertaining and informative glimpse into the past.
"...across as a truthful and honest fact gatherer, fair and impartial, ponient and knowledgable...." Read more
"...The result is a mix of travelogue and history as Horwitz interweaves his own adventures with the history...." Read more
"This is a quirky, entertaining little read about two northeastern liberals who decided to take a tour of the American South, and who were in turn..." Read more
"...Otherwise, the book was an entertaining and interesting read." Read more
Customers find the book engaging and well-written. They appreciate the author's ability to weave history and humor into a contemporary context. The lively prose and storytelling blend the past and present seamlessly.
"...It is a superb and worthy follow up. Please don't be dissuaded from this title after reading some of its detractors' uninformed reviews...." Read more
"...And I loved the book, but the West Virginia chapter makes me really wish Horwitz had written a book on Appalachia and the Rust Belt instead...." Read more
"Excellent book by Tony doing what he does best, traveling in the foot steps of a historic traveler namely Frederick Law Olmsted , traveling through..." Read more
"...His greatest work, most agree, is Confederates in the Attic. In his latest, and last, work, Horowitz followed form...." Read more
Customers find the book engaging and relevant. They appreciate learning about Olmsted's experiences and comparing them to today. The author's ability to engage people is remarkable, and he is described as a truthful and honest fact-gatherer. Memorable experiences occurred further into the country, and the author was praised for learning from locals.
"...It's well written and researched. Horwitz comes across as a truthful and honest fact gatherer, fair and impartial, ponient and knowledgable...." Read more
"...One of the most interesting interludes Olmsted had was in West Texas where he met free-thinking German immigrants who didn't like slavery or church...." Read more
"...knack for finding interesting locals wherever he goes and engaging them in conversations, which often reveal that people’s values and perspectives..." Read more
"...Olmstead is a fascinating figure who kept a running journal of his travels, which he later republished in book form...." Read more
Customers enjoy the writing quality of the book. They find it well-written, with vivid descriptions that make them feel like they are part of the trip. The author is described as a gifted and entertaining writer.
"...Not me, and yet, I couldn't be more wrong. It's well written and researched...." Read more
"This well written book details the author's journeys in 2013-2016 following the trail of Frederick Olmsted's travels through parts America in the..." Read more
"...Visual descriptions of the land and the people as well as historic places is the high point some of which are dark such as the massacre of African..." Read more
"...Horwitz was a gifted writer and his recent death is a loss. Too bad, this is his final work." Read more
Customers enjoy the humor in the book. They find it entertaining and quirky. The author integrates a profound story within an enjoyable read that is thought-provoking at the same time.
"...Tony has that great depreciating humor that adds to the joy of this book. He will be missed." Read more
"...it is a book that encourages reflection, but can also be funny, sad, and troubling." Read more
"This is a quirky, entertaining little read about two northeastern liberals who decided to take a tour of the American South, and who were in turn..." Read more
"...Horwitz is an entertaining author, who embeds a profound story inside an entertaining story as we follow him through his travels...." Read more
Customers find the book provides an interesting perspective on the South and its people. They appreciate the cultural description and insightful commentary on modern America. The food is described as descriptive, frequently fried and spicy.
"...The food is also very descriptive, frequently fried and spicy and almost killed the Aussie...." Read more
"...a liberal look at the South in the 1850's, and a liberal look at the South today. The combination works well for the reader...." Read more
"...entree into the life and work of Olmsted and an insightful commentary on present day America. Loved it." Read more
"...Not political, but a true cultural description of the Southern experience and people." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2022I read "Spying On the South" after reading Horwitz's excellent book "Confederates in the Attic." It is a superb and worthy follow up.
Please don't be dissuaded from this title after reading some of its detractors' uninformed reviews. Several Amazon reviewers openly acknowledge being "Southern" and never having read the book, or they "start it" but "never finish." I understand it can be hard reading about your state's or your culture's ugly history. I live in Southern California. I see plenty of things that embarrass me and I wish they were not true; however, that doesn't make the criticisms--about the South or SoCal--wrong or inaccurate. Horwitz's criticisms and insights are invariably accurate and insightful.
He takes the reader on a journey through the South while juxtaposing his adventures to a similar trip taken 165 years by the architect of New York's Central Park, Fred Omlsted. Who would think such a book would be interesting, entertaining or relevant to today's America??? Not me, and yet, I couldn't be more wrong.
It's well written and researched. Horwitz comes across as a truthful and honest fact gatherer, fair and impartial, ponient and knowledgable.
In the end, Horwitz suggests that today's rift between Red and Blue can be bridged. While I'm skeptical, I'll happily defer to an unbiased arbiter like Tony Horwitz.
Well done and R.I.P.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2019I love Tony Horwitz’s nonfiction. He has a simple formula: he picks some interesting, underappreciated bit of history, then explores the modern day geography. The result is a mix of travelogue and history as Horwitz interweaves his own adventures with the history. His best known work is Confederates in the Attic, and I was beyond overjoyed when I saw that he was returning to the South.
Spying on the South retraces the steps of Frederick Olmstead on a pre-Civil War trip through the South. (It wasn’t my focus or his, but Horwitz’s portrait of a young Olmstead, well before his days as a famed landscape artists, is delightful.) Horwitz alternates historical tidbits with his own misadventures. I said travelogue, but that undersells it. How many travelogues include one leg by coal barge and another by mule? The real joy of these sections are the people Horwitz meets along the way. He treats them with dignity and humanity, and their disparate stories will do far more to flesh out hillbillies and white working class Americans for the person who entry to the field was Hillbilly Elegy than a work like, say, Appalachian Reckoning.
I should make clear, though, that this is not a work that primarily focuses on hillbillies. Horwitz starts in West Virginia, but he also spends time in Kentucky, Tennessee, along the Mississippi, in Louisiana, Texas, and on the Texas-Mexico border. I was disappointed to learn that Horwitz only covers the “there” (not the “back again”) of Olmstead’s second trip. He leaves out, then, stops in Chattanooga, Asheville, and Abingdon that would have been of particular interest to me. And I loved the book, but the West Virginia chapter makes me really wish Horwitz had written a book on Appalachia and the Rust Belt instead.
Olmstead made his journeys through the South a mere decade before the Civil War. It wasn’t a pleasure trip: he sent regular dispatches back to New York for newspaper publication, and he collected and edited those dispatches into a three-volume book (since Horwitz skips the return journey with its long leg through Appalachia, I’m going to pick up the third volume, A Journey in the Back Country). Olmstead intended to foster dialogue in a country sharply divided; instead he came to see the South as intransigent and became radicalized (he would later moderate and arguably betray his principles by designed segregated spaces in the South).
As the subtitle suggests, Horwitz also takes an odyssey across the American divide. His experience writing Confederates in the Attic notwithstanding, Horwitz is open about how little he knows about the territory he covers, especially Texas. The people he meets are very much foreign to him—culturally, politically, and economically.
Spying on the South seems well-timed, and it is, but it isn’t directly a response to Trump. Horwitz sets off on his journey in West Virginia before the 2016 primaries even started. As the narrative and timeline progress, Trump begins to intrude, but Horwitz does an admirable job not using him as a crutch.
This is Horwitz’s most political and most pessimistic book, but it still has everything that makes his other books so special. The coal barge highlights “a good living for country boys” where they “can still work from the neck down.” A sojourn at a weekend devoted to mudding and Horwitz’s misadventures on a mule are enormously entertaining. Horwitz humanizes the people of the Red States he crosses throughout. Among other things, Horwitz’s narrative highlights the cultural diversity of the Red States. West Virginia is very different than Cajun Louisiana is very different than rural east Texas is very different from the Texas-Mexico border. The focus is rural, with cities like Nashville and Houston getting short shrift. The economic contrast between the rural Appalachia and South and the cities of Texas is stark.
Horwitz works hard to see the best in people, but the South has an ugly history with race, in a place where “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Horwitz goes on plantation tours that somehow manage to avoid any mention of slavery in Mississippi and is subjected to racial slurs by Texans who insist there is a camp of Muslim insurgents in their rural county (Horwitz, who worked extensively in the Middle East as a journalist, offers to go check it out). His story of a slaveholder who attempted to join in political reform after the Civil War ends in the slaughter of dozens of African-Americans.
Spying on the South may not be Horwitz’s most enjoyable book, but it is his most relevant to what I am doing here. It is the sort of book that the working class-curious neophyte ought to read, and early. Even if you aren’t so culturally conscious, you are sure to learn something from the history side.
- Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2019This well written book details the author's journeys in 2013-2016 following the trail of Frederick Olmsted's travels through parts America in the 1850s. The narrative is equally split between the two trips; the author summarizes what Olmsted learned, notes how things have changed since. Olmsted, who was writing for the NY Times under a pseudonym as he posted his dispatches, and eventually summarized and expanded them into three books, is far better known as the architect of New York's Central Park, and many other parks throughout the US. We follow the author along the National Pike in the Maryland panhandle, through northern West Virginia, on a barge down the Ohio River, through Kentucky, Louisiana, and east Texas. Olmsted found settlements by German immigrants in Texas, with architecture corresponding to their roots; some were still there 150 years later!
Olmsted was an active foe of slavery, and his writing included detailed and graphic descriptions of what it was like for those enslaved. In the last chapter, we learn that it was Olmsted's trilogy describing his travels, found in a prison library, that awakened and radicalized Malcolm X.
Top reviews from other countries
- Dave the RaveReviewed in Canada on October 14, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars Better than Confederate in the attic
This is an easy to read, hard to put down romp through the South. With Yeoman as his guide, the author makes use of accidental characters to stitch a picture of the South, both past and present, that few readers will ever have the time or inclination uncover for themselves. His description of his interactions with mules is better than anything written by BIll Byerson. His send up of the political antics of the rhinestone mountain men who make up Trump's "base" is priceless.
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Cliente KindleReviewed in Italy on September 23, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars Due libri in uno
È vero che esiste un legame tra Olmsted viaggiatore e Olmsted architetto, tuttavia le due parti del libro restano disomogenee. Malgrado ciò il libro è di grande interesse e cattura subito l'attenzione del lettore e la mantiene.