Through a generous donation by Geraldine Brooks, the Center for Cultural Landscapes received Tony Horwitz’s collection of books on Frederick Law Olmsted. These books served as reference material for Tony when he was writing his final book, Spying on the South (2019). This novel was a compelling account of Tony’s journey as he retraced Frederick Law Olmsted’s travels through the pre-Civil War American South as told through The Cotton Kingdom (1861). The Tony Horwitz book collection is unique in that the books contain his handwritten notes and page flags and offer us a connection to Tony akin to a posthumous conversation about his research on Olmsted.  

Tony Horwitz (1958-2019) was an acclaimed author and journalist. He won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1995 for his Wall Street Journal articles documenting low wage working conditions in the United States. His notable literary contributions include bestselling novel Confederates in the Attic, Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (1998), Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before (2002), A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World (2008), and Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War (2011). His final book was Spying on the South, which was published shortly before his untimely passing in 2019. Geraldine Brooks is also a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Tony’s surviving spouse. We are incredibly grateful for Geraldine’s donation and to Dede Petri, President of the Olmsted Network, for connecting us.  

Please stop by the CCL office to enjoy these books and the cultural link between a 19th century journalist/landscape architect and a modern day journalist writing about cultural landscapes.  

— Laura Whitaker, Rogers Fellow