This book has been on my “To read” list for a bit. A co-worker read it before me and said how much she loved it. So as soon as I had finished the book I was reading, I got ahold of this one – The Demon of Unrest.
As someone who loves history, I truly found this book fascinating. It takes place during the time leading up to the Civil War. Here is the Goodreads synopsis:
On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, 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: Fort Sumter.
Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of 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 both. 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.
I had learned about Fort Sumter in school history classes, but this book went so much deeper. There were things I had never heard before. The events that led up to the Civil War were much more complicated that I was aware of.
Mary Chesnut compiled a diary full of information and insight. That diary would be published in a few forms. “Mary Chesnut’s Civil War,” “Mary Chesnut’s Diary,” and “A Diary From Dixie,” just to name a few. Many entries from the diary are quoted in this book giving you a first hand account of some key events.
Throughout the book, you are treated to things Lincoln wrote, military communications, and diaries from other key people. These things go deep into the personal conflicts each of these people were dealing with.
The book is a long one, but I rarely felt that it was dragging. If you are a history buff, I cannot recommend this book more highly.
5 out of 5 stars!
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 
You can’t go wrong with an Erik Larson book. All his works are great!
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