Thank you to the publisher, the author and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

This was a very timely read! The author takes us on a journey to the south in an effort to understand why Confederate statues are more than history. Why are statues/monuments that oppress black Americans still standing? Other statues are gone (King George, Nazi statues in Germany, Saddam Hussein statues in Baghdad) are all gone. Why does America keep statues of people who lost the Civil War? 

It also touches a bit on the history of the Klan, both the original Klan and the variations that have come along since. I found myself nodding my head when he talked about how black success threatens white power. I had no idea how prevalent lynchings were and some of the stories were hard to read (the story of Thomas Moss in particular). 

This reads like a history book with the author's own personal story mentioned along the way. Highly recommend this if you are interested in the history of the South.

I had downloaded this advanced reader copy days before George Floyd was killed. I have a degree in history and a strong interest in the Civil War, and was looking forward to reading about a topic that I have struggled with.

Connor Towne O'Neill had what one would consider a lightning bolt moment. Racing to attend the anniversary of the Selma March with President Obama participating, he was trying to find a parking spot. He pulled into a cemetery and witnessed a local Confederate group around a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest. This dichotomy, of a gathering to remember a pivotal moment in Civil Rights history, versus this other gathering a few blocks away, set him on a journey to try and understand both sides of the debate around Confederate statues and buildings in the South.

Both sides are passionate, and truly believe in their cause. But those who want to keep these statues in place have very narrow ideas of history. Forrest was a notorious slave trader, who made a lot of money selling slaves up the river from Memphis. But "that was then" is the excuse, and all of these organizations only want to remember him, and others for their bravery during the Civil War, and refuse to recognize the daily pain inflicted on the descendants of those slaves. So much of the history is truly white-washed in the name of preserving the old South.

Come October when this book comes out, I believe there will still be plenty of statues, and protests around this issue. Though it was gratifying to know that the Mississippi Flag came down the day before I finished reading this excellent book.

An important and timely book that examines the life of the notorious Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest - the man behind many monuments in the south. Forrest made his fortune selling humans, was known for his brutality as a confederate general, and went on to become the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. It's a chilling history and I hope this book will help more people to think about these monuments of white supremacy and why they need to come down.

When life for the entire universe and planet turns on its end and like everyone else you "have nothing to do" while your place of work is closed and you are in #COVID19 #socialisolation,  superspeed readers like me can read 250+ pages/hour, so yes, I have read the book … and many more today. (I have played a zillion games of scrabble, done a zillion crosswords and I AM BORED!!!)

I requested and received a temporary digital Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley, the publisher and the author in exchange for an honest review.  

From the publisher, as I do not repeat the contents or story of books in reviews, I let them do it as they do it better than I do 😸.

An unexpected, eye-opening account of how we got from Appomattox to Charlottesville—and where we might go next—told in marble, bronze, and brick.

In the spring of 2015, journalist Connor Towne O'Neill—visiting Selma, Alabama, on the fiftieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when black protesters were beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge—stumbled upon a meeting of a neo-Confederate group calling themselves the Friends of Forrest. Their mission: to keep alive the memory of Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the most effective, and vicious, Confederate generals and the first leader of the Ku Klux Klan. 

Just two months later, Dylann Roof killed nine black worshippers in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in an attempt to start a new race war. The juxtaposition of these events sent O'Neill down a rabbit hole of exploration into the newly raging fights over Confederate monuments—the history these memorials tell and the history they obscure.

In the course of Down Along with That Devil's Bones, O'Neill brings the reader along as he travels across Alabama and Tennessee to dive deeper into the story of Nathan Bedford Forrest, less known than Robert E. Lee, but to a segment of people, he met still a white supremacist hero. Exploring local battles over statues and buildings dedicated to Forrest, talking to activists and academics alike, O'Neill uses Forrest as a lens through which to understand some of the racial upheavals of recent years, delivering a personal and soul-searching series of dispatches from the (increasingly bloody) battlefields of our country’s symbolic landscape, tracing the memory of one of the Confederacy’s most vicious defenders to reveal a cold Civil War that is, every day, smouldering back to life. And at the same time, O'Neill, a white northerner now living in Alabama, finds he has to revise the story he has believed about himself and his own privileged distance—he thought—from white supremacy.

Maybe I am showing my age but *, OF COURSE, I know who Nathan Bedford Forrest is - he is who Forrest Gump"  was named after: he is even shown with the rest of the KKK on horseback in said movie! That aside, (get ready, I go on a lot of diatribes and sidebars) this book is REALLY SCARY TO READ. I am Canadian and I know that there are white supremacists around in this country (In the past, I worked with one) but this is something I normally read about in the news.

The research that went into this book is staggering and it is presented in a way that the book does not read like a thesis. (Does that make sense? I have read and reviewed a lot of books that read and "sounded" like dissertations that leave the everyday reader bored at the minutiae: this is not one of those books).  I actually enjoyed reading this book as I learned so much in an enjoyable way. It sucks you and although it is a shorter book (250 or so pages)  and it makes one wonder what is going to happen in the future - will it be as Mr Towne O'Neill said or will it be worse? (Maybe that is up to us?? Maybe humanity will win? Maybe they will?) Read this book and decided for yourself what we need to do....

As always, I try to find a reason to not rate with stars as I love emojis (outside of their incessant use by "🙏-ed Social Influencer Millennials/#BachelorNation survivors/Tik-Tok and YouTube  Millionaires/etc. " on Instagram and Twitter... Get a real job, people!) so let's give it some Bubba Gump (yes I had to go there!!!) 🥠🥠🥠🥠🥠
(as a matter of fact, I am now going to watch that movie this afternoon!!!)