01-05-2026, 09:12 AM
Spying on the South by Peter Horwitz
The clickbait title suckered me in. In the precis for the book, ostensibly it was supposed to be about Frederick Law Olmsted's journey through the South to report on conditions there in the lead up to the Civil War. Granted, FLO, didn't know there was to be a Civil War but he wanted to find ways to bridge the divide between the Slave states and the Non-Slave states. So, he journey south all the way to Texas to get a better understanding of what people felt down there. If you don't recognize the name Frederick Law Olmsted, he was part of the team that designed Central Park. Closer to home, he was one of the original commissioners that ran the Yosemite Grant. He was instrumental in writing a report on how the park should be run. Side note, part of the report was suppressed or mislaid because moneyed interests didn't like some of his plans. On the negative, he also made sure there would be no forest fires in the valley, an idea which ruined the ecology of the park for many years. But I digress.
This was the guy who was going to write about the South. And part of that journey would later influence his feelings about the need for egalitarian public spaces. That's not quite what we got. Instead, it was a travelogue by Horwitz who used Olmsted's route as kind of a template for his own journey. He visited the places Olmsted visited and talk to the current residents in those places about their modern experience. Now, Horwitz took his trip in 2016 in the run up to the eventual election of Tr***. There were parallels to Olmsted's fractured country and our own current fractured country. But most of the book was Horwitz's experiences and that's not really what I wanted. I was curious about Olmsted for his ties to Yosemite. I got Horwitz.
It took me a long time to get through this book. I kept putting it down in favor of lighter fare. Every time i went back to it, I was just mad that I was reading about Horwitz and his journey rather than Olmsted.
The clickbait title suckered me in. In the precis for the book, ostensibly it was supposed to be about Frederick Law Olmsted's journey through the South to report on conditions there in the lead up to the Civil War. Granted, FLO, didn't know there was to be a Civil War but he wanted to find ways to bridge the divide between the Slave states and the Non-Slave states. So, he journey south all the way to Texas to get a better understanding of what people felt down there. If you don't recognize the name Frederick Law Olmsted, he was part of the team that designed Central Park. Closer to home, he was one of the original commissioners that ran the Yosemite Grant. He was instrumental in writing a report on how the park should be run. Side note, part of the report was suppressed or mislaid because moneyed interests didn't like some of his plans. On the negative, he also made sure there would be no forest fires in the valley, an idea which ruined the ecology of the park for many years. But I digress.
This was the guy who was going to write about the South. And part of that journey would later influence his feelings about the need for egalitarian public spaces. That's not quite what we got. Instead, it was a travelogue by Horwitz who used Olmsted's route as kind of a template for his own journey. He visited the places Olmsted visited and talk to the current residents in those places about their modern experience. Now, Horwitz took his trip in 2016 in the run up to the eventual election of Tr***. There were parallels to Olmsted's fractured country and our own current fractured country. But most of the book was Horwitz's experiences and that's not really what I wanted. I was curious about Olmsted for his ties to Yosemite. I got Horwitz.
It took me a long time to get through this book. I kept putting it down in favor of lighter fare. Every time i went back to it, I was just mad that I was reading about Horwitz and his journey rather than Olmsted.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm