Perspective

Horwitz is an active participant in the events he describes in Confederates in the Attic and he writes from his own personal perspective. Horwitz is a Jewish man whose ancestors were immigrants to America in the late nineteenth century and has no family ties to the Confederacy or the South of the Civil War era. Nevertheless, as a boy during the centennial remembrance of the war in the 1960s, he became fascinated with the war. He put aside his boyhood fascination for a time, but this early fascination gives him an enthusiastic perspective as he sets out to explore the modern opinions about the war through the part of the country where it was mostly fought.

Horwitz is trained as a journalist, but he does not use the journalistic techniques of removing himself from the description of events or trying to present an objective viewpoint. He describes his...