I was able to get my copy of C's in the Attic signed. That was good. I am going to scope out the library for his other works. That's where the 'as advertised' ends. He is very entertaining. Easy to talk to and very funny. I very much enjoyed his word use even if I have a little different view of the event or subject. The real 'meat' to this was his just finished and in the hands of his publisher new book on John Brown. Yep, I knew it would be loaded. To his credit he did say John Brown was not the kind, benevolent soul many wish to portray. Then the Q&A's started. Almost to a person, the ones recognized to ask a question were from the Nat'l Park Service. One had been curator or something at Harper's Ferry and asked Tony about the 'monument' the UDC put up in the 1920's as a memorial to the first man Brown's gang killed, a Black man. The UDC said he was a loyal slave. The facts do not point to that and say he was free and worked for the railroad. So, now there's a marker explaining the errors in the UDC marker. Really, I ain't makin this up.
Then a University Prof, from somewhere in Virginia, (whose name was Aheeb or something similar) asked if Tony could explain why the students at his University were so intense in their passion for the Civil War it bordered on "erotic"????? Really, I heard him say that.
As a 'reporter' Horwitz is trained to look at facts. He has an inate sense of place and humor in the facts. Not all are flattering to the South but also, not all are flattering to anyone. He made a couple of remarks I'd say were close to 'snarky' about bursting the people in Elba, Al's bubble when he wrote in the book that the Last Confederate Widow was the widow of a deserter. I got the sense that many in the audience were not locals or Southern. The laughs were not on things a true Southerner would find amusing.
There was NO Round Table. The plants were bussed in to push the new book.
Pam