Join Alex C. for our non-fiction book club. This month's ti tle is The Demon of Unrest: a saga of hubris\, heartbreak\, and herois m at the dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson. Copies of the book are available at the circulation desk for checkout. \;
\nBo ok Abstract:
\nOn November 6\, 1860\, Abraham Lincoln becam e the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds\; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the U nion\, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict\, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor: Fo rt Sumter.
\nMaster storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping accoun t of the chaotic months between Lincoln&rsquo\;s election and the Confeder acy&rsquo\;s shelling of Sumter&mdash\;a period marked by tragic errors an d miscommunications\, enflamed egos and craven ambitions\, personal traged ies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five mon ths were &ldquo\;so great that\, could I have anticipated them\, I would n ot have believed it possible to survive them.&rdquo\;
\nAt the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson\, Sumter&rsqu o\;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 o f a prominent planter\, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seei ng parallels between them. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Linc oln\, battling with his duplicitous secretary of state\, William Seward\, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable&mdash\; one that will eventually kill 750\,000 Americans.
\nDrawing on diari es\, secret communiques\, slave ledgers\, and plantation records\, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led Americ a to the brink&mdash\;a dark reminder that we often don&rsquo\;t see a cat aclysm coming until it&rsquo\;s too late.
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