Key insights from
The Demon of Unrest
What you'll learn
Erik Larson is a former Wall Street Journal and Time writer whose narrative histories, including The Devil in the White City, Dead Wake and The Splendid and the Vile, have sold millions of copies.
In The Demon of Unrest, Erik Larson tells the story of the five months between Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860 and the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861, when a divided country slid from argument into civil war. Through a cast that includes a conflicted army major, a famous diarist, a vain secessionist agitator and an overconfident secretary of state, the book shows how pride, misjudgment and the defense of slavery turned a standoff over one harbor fort into the nation’s bloodiest conflict. You’ll learn why compromise failed, how honor and fear drove the South, and why Larson believes the story still speaks to a polarized present.
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