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Spying on the South : an odyssey across the American divide / Tony Horwitz.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Penguin Press, 2019Description: 476 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781101980286
  • 1101980281
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
American nomad -- Yeoman Olmsted: "An enthusiast by nature" -- Over the Alleghenies: gateway to the Rust Belt -- Ohio River: mutants making tow -- Kentucky: "A balance sheet of good against evil" -- To Tennessee and back: a thorough aristocrat -- Mississippi River: Steamboat blues -- Lower Mississippi: the absolute South -- New Orleans: the gumbo city -- Into the bayou: "Dat's how we roll" -- Central Louisiana: the unreconstructed South -- The Red River; heard of mudness -- Across the Sabine: "Gwine to Texas" -- Gulf Coast: oil and water -- Crockett, Texas: "The drift of things" in ruby-red America -- Austin and beyond: the Loon Star Republic -- San Antonio: high holy days at the Alamo -- German Texas: Olmsted in Arcadia -- The Hill Country: true to the Union -- Upper Guadalupe: and Absalom rode upon a mule -- To the Rio Grande: border disorder -- La Frontera: days of the dead -- Central Park ramble.
Summary: "The author retraces Frederick Law Olmsted's journey across the American South in the 1850s, on the eve of the Civil War. Olmsted roamed eleven states and six thousand miles, and the New York Times published his dispatches about slavery and its defenders. More than 150 years later, Tony Horwitz followed Olmsted's route, and whenever possible his mode of transport--rail, riverboats, in the saddle--through Appalachia, down the Ohio and Mississippi, through Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, and across Texas to the Rio Grande, discovering and reporting on vestiges of what Olmsted called the Cotton Kingdom"-- Provided by publisher.
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 917.504 H824 Available 33111009678869
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The New York Times -bestselling final book by the beloved, Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Tony Horwitz.

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.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 455-462) and index.

"The author retraces Frederick Law Olmsted's journey across the American South in the 1850s, on the eve of the Civil War. Olmsted roamed eleven states and six thousand miles, and the New York Times published his dispatches about slavery and its defenders. More than 150 years later, Tony Horwitz followed Olmsted's route, and whenever possible his mode of transport--rail, riverboats, in the saddle--through Appalachia, down the Ohio and Mississippi, through Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, and across Texas to the Rio Grande, discovering and reporting on vestiges of what Olmsted called the Cotton Kingdom"-- Provided by publisher.

American nomad -- Yeoman Olmsted: "An enthusiast by nature" -- Over the Alleghenies: gateway to the Rust Belt -- Ohio River: mutants making tow -- Kentucky: "A balance sheet of good against evil" -- To Tennessee and back: a thorough aristocrat -- Mississippi River: Steamboat blues -- Lower Mississippi: the absolute South -- New Orleans: the gumbo city -- Into the bayou: "Dat's how we roll" -- Central Louisiana: the unreconstructed South -- The Red River; heard of mudness -- Across the Sabine: "Gwine to Texas" -- Gulf Coast: oil and water -- Crockett, Texas: "The drift of things" in ruby-red America -- Austin and beyond: the Loon Star Republic -- San Antonio: high holy days at the Alamo -- German Texas: Olmsted in Arcadia -- The Hill Country: true to the Union -- Upper Guadalupe: and Absalom rode upon a mule -- To the Rio Grande: border disorder -- La Frontera: days of the dead -- Central Park ramble.

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