Matt McKeon
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2019
- Messages
- 1,106
- Reaction score
- 1,610
This is Horwitz's last book, sadly. He traces the travels of Frederick Law Olmstead through the old Southwest and Texas in the 1850s. Horwitz's sojourn takes place in 2016 on the eve of the nominations for president.
Horwitz is his friendly, interested self, describing the hollowed out economy of West Virginia, traveling on a coal barge on the Ohio River, down the Mississippi, touring several plantation homes, looking for traces of places Olmstead described. Like Olmstead he spends a great deal of time in Texas.
Olmstead thought of himself as an anti-slavery man, but a fairminded, reasonable and compromising fellow(don't we all). But the people he meets aren't much for compromise. Horwitz will talk to anyone and has a gift for the way people speak. He takes people as they are, genial Cajuns, riproaring "mudders," guys who reenact the Alamo, Mexican immigrants, Border Patrol agents, Texans of German descent(whom Olmstead admired). His unfailing good humor fails him when confronted by a paranoid nut fixated on a Muslim family and a mule borne camping trip with an anti-social wrangler.
He ends at Olmstead's most famous creation, Central Park in New York City: a space that would bring people together, where they would find a calm oasis.
Recommended, quite good. What a loss.
Horwitz is his friendly, interested self, describing the hollowed out economy of West Virginia, traveling on a coal barge on the Ohio River, down the Mississippi, touring several plantation homes, looking for traces of places Olmstead described. Like Olmstead he spends a great deal of time in Texas.
Olmstead thought of himself as an anti-slavery man, but a fairminded, reasonable and compromising fellow(don't we all). But the people he meets aren't much for compromise. Horwitz will talk to anyone and has a gift for the way people speak. He takes people as they are, genial Cajuns, riproaring "mudders," guys who reenact the Alamo, Mexican immigrants, Border Patrol agents, Texans of German descent(whom Olmstead admired). His unfailing good humor fails him when confronted by a paranoid nut fixated on a Muslim family and a mule borne camping trip with an anti-social wrangler.
He ends at Olmstead's most famous creation, Central Park in New York City: a space that would bring people together, where they would find a calm oasis.
Recommended, quite good. What a loss.