Nonfiction Book Club

Join fellow readers at the library for an engaging discussion of The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson on Thursday July 18th at 1:30 p.m.

Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 election to the presidency of the United States and the Confederacy’s shelling of Fort Sumter—a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies, and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were “so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.”

At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between them. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous secretary of state, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable—one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans.

Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.

Copies of the book are available on Libby and may also be picked up at the Information Desk.