*It's your job to find chapter summaries online or to read the whole book.*

Horwitz, Tony. Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. New York: Vintage Books, 1998.

Write a concise analytical essay on Confederates in the Attic

Format: 4-7 pages, 1-inch margins, 12-point font, 1.5-line or double-spacing, parenthetical citations or endnotes. Follow Chicago Manual of Style.

Basic Task: Identify and discuss key themes of the work. Closely read and analyze the contents of at least four chapters (as specified below). In addition to your “response” to the book and focus chapters, consider, for example, how the author structures each chapter; how he gathers and presents data; the issues and questions he raises; objectives, arguments or positions he articulates; etc.

Your analysis should focus on chapters 4-5 and at least two other chapters of your choice from among chapters 6 through 14. (Y’all can certainly discuss passages from chapters 1-3 and 15, but I would like to see close readings of four other chapters.) Though all the chapters are fascinating, the following may lend themselves to especially fruitful analysis: chapter 8 (“Tennessee: The Ghost Marks of Shiloh”), chapter 10 (“Virginia and Beyond: The Civil Wargasm”), and chapter 14 (Alabama: I Had a Dream”).

Additional prompts: In addition to carefully analyzing your focus chapters, please think about the following questions (adapted from www.readinggroupguides.com).

* Horwitz writes about the killing of Michael Westerman while flying a Confederate flag from his truck, in Todd County, Kentucky. What are the social and emotional reasons why Westerman’s killing becomes such a flashpoint for Southern anger, both black and white?

* Horwitz meets many women who are as devoted as men to memory of the War: Sue Curtis, June Wells, Melly

Meadows, Mauriel Joslyn. How does their approach to the War differ from that of men?

* Many Southern whites revere the rebel battle flag as a symbol of the valor and sacrifice of their ancestors. To many African-Americans, the same flag is a hated symbol of segregation and white supremacy. Is there any middle ground?

* In Richmond, Horwitz listens to a debate over whether a statue of Arthur Ashe belongs on Monument Avenue. He finds his own views shifting. What are the various positions in this debate? Why does Horwitz’s views shift? Do you think the statue should have been put there?

* Throughout his journey, Horwitz encounters a profound sense of Southern grievance, a feeling that the region is still looked down on. Is this Southern paranoia or a justifiable response to the way the region is regarded by the North and by Hollywood? What were your views of the South (prior to reading this book)?

* At one point, Horwitz, clad as a Confederate reenactor, walks into a shop full of black shoppers and feels ashamed. Is it possible to play-act the Civil War as spectacle, or does reenacting the War inevitably raise troubling questions? Horwitz often asks himself a difficult question: what is the appropriate way to remember the Confederacy and those who fought for it? What do you think?

* At Andersonville Prison, Horwitz finds that there are two irreconcilable views of who was responsible for the tragedy there. Who wrote these histories and why? Which view do you think is more accurate?

* In Alabama, Horwitz visits classrooms to see how the Civil War is being taught today. How are black and white students approaching the War differently? Is there any sense of a common American history?

* Across the South, Horwitz implies that the dream of the Civil Rights era is embattled. In what ways does he show progress in race relations, and in what ways retreat?