Horwitz traces his Civil War obsession to his Russian immigrant grandfather, who bought a Civil War photo book despite arriving in America penniless.

Horwitz is woken by Civil War reenactment gunfire near his Blue Ridge Mountains home and joins a group of hardcore living historians.

Horwitz meets Robert Lee Hodge for the first time during an overnight hardcore reenactor outing in the Virginia woods.

Horwitz attends a Sons of Confederate Veterans meeting in North Carolina featuring a competitive Lee-Jackson Civil War trivia competition.

Horwitz visits Fort Sumter in South Carolina and tours the site where the first battle of the Civil War began.

Horwitz meets June Wells, who runs a small Confederate museum inside a Charleston kindergarten and reflects on the legacy of Southern defeat.

The Confederate Battle Flag flies above South Carolina's state capitol, and Horwitz meets the Council of Conservative Citizens who fiercely defend it.

An interview subject makes an anti-Semitic remark, and Horwitz silences him by revealing he is Jewish.

Horwitz investigates the killing of Michael Westerman, a Confederate-flag-flying white man shot by young African-American men in Guthrie, Kentucky.

Freddie Morrow is convicted of murdering Michael Westerman after a racially divisive trial that draws the NAACP and the Ku Klux Klan to town.

Horwitz conducts an extended interview with Civil War historian Shelby Foote in Memphis, exploring the deep contradictions at the heart of the Southern mindset.

Horwitz and Robert Lee Hodge launch the Civil Wargasm, a frantic multi-day tour of Civil War battlefields across Virginia and beyond.

Horwitz and Hodge conclude the Civil Wargasm by participating in a reenactment of Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg.

Horwitz tours Montgomery and Selma, interviewing African-Americans about the Civil Rights Movement and the Civil War's unresolved racial legacy.

Horwitz discovers that his recently retired father quietly shared his Civil War obsession, recognizing the passion as an unspoken family tradition.

Tony Horwitz's journey begins with a childhood obsession inherited from his Russian immigrant grandfather and is reignited when Civil War reenactors wake him near the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he meets the unforgettable Robert Lee Hodge. Traveling south through the Carolinas, he encounters Confederate museum keepers, flag defenders, and divisive political organizations, including a moment where he publicly identifies himself as Jewish to an anti-Semitic interviewee. In Kentucky, the real-world consequences of Civil War symbolism come into focus through the killing of Michael Westerman and the racially charged trial that follows. A landmark interview with historian Shelby Foote in Memphis reframes the contradictions of the Southern psyche, while the sweeping Civil Wargasm road trip with Hodge—culminating in a Pickett's Charge reenactment—marks Horwitz's transformation from journalist to participant. The final chapters bring the racial cost of the war into sharp relief through Horwitz's time in Selma and Montgomery, and the book closes with a quiet revelation that his own father shared his Civil War obsession all along.

The headline moments of Horwitz's Southern Civil War journey.

Horwitz tours a North Carolina Civil War cemetery with an African-American man who was struck by the near-total absence of Black residents nearby.

Horwitz attends a celebration in North Carolina honoring the birthdays of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

Horwitz encounters the Children of the Confederacy, a youth organization in North Carolina designed to instill Confederate heritage in the next generation.

Horwitz meets plumber Jamie Westendorff in Charleston, who digs up old outhouses for treasure and likens himself to Civil War blockade runners.

Horwitz tours the Citadel in Charleston, a military college constructed in direct response to Denmark Vesey's failed slave revolt.

Horwitz meets secessionist artist Manning Williams in Charleston, who insists the Civil War is emotionally still on and unresolved.

Horwitz enters a Guthrie, Kentucky biker bar where a man wears a shirt bearing a racial slur, signaling the town's deep racial hostility.

Horwitz investigates the bitter debate over whether Todd County's high school should drop its Confederate-themed Rebels team mascot.

Horwitz rejoins Robert Lee Hodge for the Battle of the Wilderness reenactment in Virginia, immersing himself as a participant in living history.

Park ranger Paul Hawke shows Horwitz how wars leave ghost marks on the Shiloh landscape, overturning Horwitz's assumptions about the battle's history.

Horwitz arrives in Vicksburg, Mississippi, finding a historic Civil War city transformed into a gambling destination where tourists ignore the battlefield sites.

Horwitz discovers that Disney abandoned plans to build a Civil War theme park near the Manassas battlefield after widespread preservationist opposition.

Horwitz observes a heated debate over whether a statue of tennis star Arthur Ashe should be placed on Richmond's Confederate Monument Avenue.

Horwitz tours Andersonville prison camp in Georgia, discovering that both Northern and Southern historical accounts distort the truth of its horrors.

Horwitz tours the Alabama state capitol with Sandy, a young Black guide who jokes that Confederate-era leaders must be rolling in their graves.

From North Carolina cemeteries to Georgia prison camps, this pool follows the supporting figures and landmark destinations that give texture and depth to Horwitz's journey. He encounters a Lee-Jackson birthday celebration, the Children of the Confederacy youth group, an outhouse-digging plumber in Charleston, and a firebrand secessionist who insists the war never truly ended. Moving into Kentucky, the racial fault lines become visceral through the fierce controversy over a high school Rebels mascot, while a return to Virginia reenacting grounds Horwitz back in the physical world of living history. Horwitz then uncovers hidden histories in Vicksburg, questions the sanitized narratives surrounding national monuments and failed theme parks, and confronts the deliberate distortions embedded in Andersonville's competing historical accounts. The pool ends at Alabama's state capitol, where a young Black tour guide finds quiet personal triumph in working beneath the portraits of men who once fought to keep her ancestors enslaved.

The people, places, and debates that shaped Horwitz's Southern tour.

At a Martin Luther King Jr. birthday service in North Carolina, an African-American minister dismisses Confederate nostalgia with: You lost. Get over it.

Horwitz discovers that Charleston has almost no Civil War presence on its streets, because the Confederacy was a brief chapter in its long colonial history.

Horwitz meets a young African-American man and a progressive white Southerner in South Carolina who both argue that racial unity is the region's only path forward.

At a Virginia reenactment, a young man named Butch McClaren tells Horwitz he would trade places with his Civil War ancestor in a second to escape modern life.

At Shiloh, Horwitz meets Bryson Powers, a Northerner who has traveled specifically to find the exact spot where his great-grandfather was wounded.

Horwitz meets Scott Sams at Shiloh, who treats the battlefield as a personal religious pilgrimage rather than a historical attraction.

Horwitz coincidentally meets German PhD student Wolfgang Hochbruck at Shiloh, who is researching why the American Civil War captivates audiences in Germany.

Horwitz discovers Vicksburg's old Jewish quarter and cemetery, finding an unexpected personal connection to the city's layered Civil War history.

Horwitz learns that Vicksburg's Black and white residents have informally divided their war commemorations, with each race attending entirely separate ceremonies.

Robert Lee Hodge erupts in furious grief upon discovering that a golf course has been built directly over a Civil War battlefield.

Horwitz discovers that Margaret Mitchell deliberately made the settings of Gone with the Wind fictional, deliberately blurring Civil War history and popular myth.

Horwitz learns about Fitzgerald, Georgia, a rare postwar town where former Confederate and Union soldiers chose to settle and live side by side.

Horwitz interviews Alberta Martin, the oldest living Confederate widow, who married a man sixty years her senior purely for financial survival.

Horwitz learns that Alabama restructured its school curriculum to begin U.S. history from 1877, effectively erasing the Civil War from public education.

Horwitz notices that his son's future room has old wooden beams and a sloping ceiling—another attic where his family's Civil War obsession may live on.

This pool traces the moments when Horwitz's assumptions are challenged, overturned, or deepened throughout his Southern journey. A blunt dismissal at a North Carolina church service, the discovery that Charleston barely registers the Confederacy, and a glimpse of two young men preaching racial unity each complicate the monolithic image of the South. At Shiloh, a lone pilgrim treats the battlefield as sacred ground, a German scholar reveals the war's unexpected global reach, and a park ranger exposes how easily battlefield fact becomes battlefield myth. In Mississippi and Virginia, a hidden Jewish cemetery and a reenactor's explosive fury over a golf-course battlefield expose the intensely personal dimensions of historical loss. The pool concludes with the oldest Confederate widow's story of poverty-driven marriage, Alabama's quiet erasure of the Civil War from its school curriculum, and Horwitz's final image of a new attic—a symbol that the obsession may outlast him entirely.