Spying on the South by Tony Horwitz

Just prior to the Civil War, Frederick Law Olmsted —later the designer of Central Park—went on a tour of the South as a correspondent for the New York Times. Just prior to today’s civil war, Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic, retraced Olmsted’s route from West Virginia to Texas and into Mexico. From plantations and a monster truck mudfest to a New Orleans gospel-rocking church, he documents how much has changed and what’s still strikingly the same. - Dave