Spying on the South
An Odyssey Across the American Divide
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Narrated by:
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Mark Deakins
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Tony Horwitz
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By:
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Tony Horwitz
About this listen
The New York Times best-selling 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.
“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)
“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)
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UNDERAPPRECIATED CLASSIC
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Critic reviews
One of the Washington Post’s Notable Nonfiction Books of 2019
One of NPR's Best Books of 2019
“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)
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Here, witness Chicago's growth from a desolate fur-trading post in the 1830s to one of the world's most explosively alive cities by 1900. Donald Miller's powerful narrative embraces it all: Chicago's wild beginnings, its reckless growth, its natural calamities (especially the Great Fire of 1871), its raucous politics, its empire-building businessmen, its world-transforming architecture, its rich mix of cultures, its community of young writers and journalists, and its staggering engineering projects.
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A STORY THAT TRIES TOO HARD....AND FAILS
- By The Louligan on 02-01-15
By: Donald L. Miller
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Appetite for America
- Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West - One Meal at a Time
- By: Stephen Fried
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Appetite for America is the incredible real-life story of Fred Harvey - told in depth for the first time ever. As a young immigrant, Fred Harvey worked his way up from dishwasher to household name. With the verve and passion of Fred Harvey himself, Stephen Fried tells the story of how this visionary built his business from a single lunch counter into a family empire whose marketing and innovations we still encounter in myriad ways. Inspiring, instructive, and hugely entertaining, Appetite for America is historical biography that is as richly rewarding.
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I loved listening to this fabulous story!
- By A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. on 01-27-20
By: Stephen Fried
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Big Wonderful Thing
- By: Stephen Harrigan
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 28 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of Texas is the story of struggle and triumph in a land of extremes. It is a story of drought and flood, invasion and war, boom and bust, and of the myriad peoples who, over centuries of conflict, gave rise to a place that has helped shape the identity of the United States and the destiny of the world.
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Guidall is in top form with very good material
- By Elizabeth on 12-22-19
By: Stephen Harrigan
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Confederates in the Attic
- Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War
- By: Tony Horwitz
- Narrated by: Arthur Addison
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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When prize-winning war correspondent Tony Horwitz leaves the battlefields of Bosnia and the Middle East for a peaceful corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he thinks he's put war zones behind him. But awakened one morning by the crackle of musket fire, Horwitz starts filing front-line dispatches again this time from a war close to home, and to his own heart.
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A Must Read for Civil War Buffs!
- By Ms Winston on 12-06-14
By: Tony Horwitz
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Lasso the Wind
- Away to the New West
- By: Timothy Egan
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Egan leads us on an unconventional, freewheeling tour: from America's oldest continuously inhabited community, the Ancoma Pueblo in New Mexico, to the high kitsch of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where London Bridge has been painstakingly rebuilt stone by stone; from the fragile beauty of Idaho's Bitterroot Range to the gross excess of Las Vegas, a city built as though in defiance of its arid environment.
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Narrator mispronounces everything
- By Catherine on 01-27-22
By: Timothy Egan
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Master Slave Husband Wife
- An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
- By: Ilyon Woo
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards, Leon Nixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.
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Necessary story well told!
- By Marc W Rhoades on 01-19-23
By: Ilyon Woo
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The Ground Breaking
- An American City and Its Search for Justice
- By: Scott Ellsworth
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the course of less than 24 hours in the spring of 1921, Tulsa’s infamous “Black Wall Street” was wiped off the map - and erased from the history books. Official records were disappeared, researchers were threatened, and the worst single incident of racial violence in American history was kept hidden for more than 50 years. But there were some secrets that would not die. A riveting and essential new book, The Ground Breaking not only tells the long-suppressed story of the notorious Tulsa race massacre.
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Excellent book on the Tulsa Massacre
- By vivabooks on 08-15-21
By: Scott Ellsworth
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Broadway
- A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles
- By: Fran Leadon
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Broadway takes us on a mile-by-mile journey that traces the gradual evolution of the 17th century's Brede Wegh, a muddy cow path in a backwater Dutch settlement, to the 20th century's Great White Way. We learn why one side of the street was once considered more fashionable than the other; witness construction of the Ansonia Apartments, Trinity Church, and the Flatiron Building and the burning of P. T. Barnum's American Museum; and discover that Columbia University was built on the site of an insane asylum.
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Give My Regards To Broadway!
- By Steven on 08-20-18
By: Fran Leadon
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West of the West
- Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State
- By: Mark Arax
- Narrated by: Mark Arax
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Teddy Roosevelt once exclaimed, "When I am in California, I am not in the West. I am west of the West", and in this book, Mark Arax spends four years travelling up and down the Golden State to explore its singular place in the world. This is California beyond the clichés. This is California as only a native son, deep in the dust, could draw it.
By: Mark Arax
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Where I Was From
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Gabrielle De Cuir
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. A native Californian, Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to the state’s ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic’s often tenuous relationship to reality. Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California’s romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons.
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California belongs to Joan Didion.
- By Darwin8u on 11-04-15
By: Joan Didion
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Train
- Riding the Rails That Created the Modern World - from the Trans-Siberian to the Southwest Chief
- By: Tom Zoellner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Tom Zoellner loves trains with a ferocious passion. In his new audiobook he chronicles the innovation and sociological impact of the railway technology that changed the world, and could very well change it again. From the frigid Trans-Siberian Railroad to the antiquated Indian Railways to the futuristic maglev trains, Zoellner offers a stirring story of man's relationship with trains. Zoellner examines both the mechanics of the rails and their engines and how they helped societies evolve. Not only do trains transport people and goods in an efficient manner, but they also reduce pollution and dependency upon oil.
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The world history of trains up to the present
- By matthew on 03-06-14
By: Tom Zoellner
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Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All
- A New Zealand Story
- By: Christina Thompson
- Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand, told partly as a history of the complex and bloody period of contact between Europeans and the Maoris in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and partly as the story of Christina Thompson's marriage to a Maori man.
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a beautiful story
- By Pumpkin99 on 12-24-22
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The Not-Quite States of America
- Dispatches from the Territories and Other Far-Flung Outposts of the USA
- By: Doug Mack
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Everyone knows that the United States of America is made up of 50 states and, uh...some other stuff. The territories of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the US Virgin Islands are often neglected, but they are filled with American flags and national parks and US post offices and some four million people, many of whom are as proudly red-white-and-blue as any Daughter of the American Revolution.
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Worthwhile Learning
- By Bessie Mae on 05-02-23
By: Doug Mack
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Travels in Siberia
- By: Ian Frazier
- Narrated by: Ian Frazier
- Length: 20 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Ian Frazier trains his eye for unforgettable detail on Siberia, that vast expanse of Asiatic Russia. He explores many aspects of this storied, often grim region. He writes about the geography, the resources, the native peoples, the history, the 40-below midwinter afternoons, the bugs. The book brims with Mongols, half-crazed Orthodox archpriests, fur seekers, ambassadors of the czar bound for Peking, tea caravans, German scientists, American prospectors, intrepid English nurses, and prisoners and exiles of every kind....
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I Loved This Book
- By Sara on 01-05-14
By: Ian Frazier
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Good travel book.
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great book beyond awareness
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What listeners say about Spying on the South
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- S. Garrett
- 06-18-19
I wish I could thank Tony Horwitz
In this book book the late Pulitzer Prize winning author Tony Horwitz interweaves firsthand observances of the antebellum South by famed landscape architect Frederick Olmsted with his own astute and often humorous observations on the same locales Olmsted visited. The narrator speaks clearly and varies his voice and accent just enough to help you keep track of who is speaking. Although the book is on the long side, it kept my interest from beginning to end. I learned a lot and was entertained. I feel saddened by Horwitz’s death. If he were still alive I would write him a word of thanks.
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- Paul Frandano
- 06-11-19
Lovely finale for intrepid journalist/historian
All such works - retracing the steps of a traveler-journalist and, a decade after his long trek, celebrated landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, and trying to make sense of the people and places he encounters - result in long sequences of, essentially, anecdotes, from which the author/traveler/investigator seeks to draw larger generalizations. The story of Olmsted's mounting animosity toward slavery runs through Horwitz's narrative, as does the author's indefatigable curiosity about "what makes things tick here?" and "who might I talk to that will help me understand?" Horwitz's generous treatment of a region that, to many, has been on the wrong side of history since 1619, or 1787, makes familiar sense of the state's, cities, and towns he passes through: with some exceptions, conservative, individualistic, religious, tribal, history-minded. Mining Olmsted's trilogy that comprises his The Cotton Kingdom enables Horwitz to resurrect history that few nonspecialists who read this book will have known about - for example, the antebellum experience of German 1848ers in Texan exile - and will send readers running back to the original texts. Horwitz does an excellent job following up on such stories and, where possible, bringing them up to date. He's also strong on detailing the horrors of slavery and the wrongs of Jim Crow. He draws unsurprising conclusions about political tribalism that is nearly analogous to the great national divide in the run-up to civil war. He is, however, generous to a near fault in writing about people with whom he disagrees. Horwitz concludes his trip by spending two days in Olmsted's greatest and best known work, NYC's Central Park, a monument to the artist's thoughts on Democracy as well as our first "park," to which the author adds a paean to beautiful open spaces and their place in our history. Tony Horwitz's untimely death, at age 60, in late May 2019, while touring this book, deprives us of an essential observer, commentator, and author.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Cedric Miller
- 10-02-19
RIP Tony Horwitz
Another excellent book by Mr. Horwitz. His humor and keen insights will be greatly missed.
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- Nancy
- 04-24-20
Another superb look at life!
I adore Tony Horwitz's writing! If I ever leave my husband, it will be to run off with Tony for a ramble through history and the world we inhabit! Every one of his books seems to be his best . . . and remains so the second or third time around. He's one of our greatest contemporary writers. Should be required reading before one is allowed to register to vote!
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- Ericka
- 06-29-19
Great final story from a talented author
Tony Horwitz was at his best when he blended history and journalism to tell us of our country’s past and present. He excels at in his final journey: “Spying on the South,” which was published just weeks before his death. The book is a mix of history lesson and travelogue as Horwitz follows in the path of landscape architect Fredrick Law Olmsted’s journeys through antebellum south. Each chapter includes part of Olmsted’s trip followed by Horwitz’ 21st-century journalism. There are plenty of interesting characters he meets across the south, particularly in Texas, which accounts for the second half of the book.
I am sad this is Horwitz’ final journey but think it was a fitting finale for the talented author. I thought the narrator did a great job of capturing Horwitz' personality during the first-person travelogue accounts.
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7 people found this helpful
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- David
- 06-12-24
It's All My Fault
I decided some months ago to read up on the intelligence community; that sector responsible for gathering actionable information for various clients. For example, the alphabet people like CIA, DOD, FBI, MI6, NSA - sometimes their work is called "Spying". My first mistake was thinking this book had anything to do with spying or official intelligence gathering. It does not. It is a story of a contemporary writer who wants to retrace the routes of an antebellum character through the southern US. The reader therefore moves back and forth between the mid-19th century and the 21st century. Fair enough. Could be good. But it's not.
The primary reason the book becomes a slog is because the author visits and reports on the least interesting places, not only in America but perhaps on the planet; worn out, tired out, fizzled out, abandoned, broken, isolated, depopulated, poor, addled, uneducated, overlooked, desperate and nearing hopelessness. My second mistake was expecting the author's Grandma had given him the same stern advice my Grandma gave me, "Never criticize someone else's house when they invite you to visit and compliment their cooking if they feed you."
I feel like I took an excessively long trip with a spoiled teenager who complained the whole way about e v e r y t h i n g and was just one paragraph away from writing, "....clinging to their guns and their Bibles..."
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- Whit Porter
- 09-02-19
A good listen, lots to think about!
Horwitz was a good observer and had a keen eye for the things that make the mundane interesting. One suspects Olmstead and he would have enjoyed each other's company.
Narrator Deakens keeps things lively, but his accents are weak and seem repetitive as the long book goes on..
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- Sondra Olmsted
- 07-14-19
Travel log
Frederick Law Olmsted and Tony Horowitz separated by almost 170 years but undertook a similar journey. Similarities are remarkable .
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- Sandra
- 11-21-20
Interesting, but...
I thought the book would be more about Olmsted than it was, although the last chapter does tie the two stories -- Horowitz's and Olmsted's -- together. As for learning about slavery and the effects on future generations, The Warmth of Other Suns is by far the more informative and more effective, in my opinion. What I found to be the most informative were the insights into Horowitz's interviewees' political viewpoints. They helped me to understand the "two nations in one country" circumstance we are now experiencing.
The reader was fine for the content, but not the most compelling of the various readers I've heard over the years.
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- Lacey
- 06-21-19
excellent
such a great book. I learned so much! I highly recommend this especially to my fellow southerners.
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