Publication Date April 30, 2024

 I am a huge fan of Erik Larson, particularly “The Splendid and the Vile,” “The Devil In the White City, ” “Dead Wake, “and “In The Garden of Beasts.” I always learn a LOT while enjoying the way his nonfiction reads like fiction. He’s one of my favorite authors, so I was particularly pleased to have a copy of “The Demon of Unrest” from Crown Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. (thank you, Crown Publishing and NetGalley)

The book focuses on the months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the attack on Fort Sumter by the Confederacy, which really got the Civil War underway. At that time, the country divided: Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding while President Lincoln was seemingly unable to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, and unlike today’s frequent assertions, slavery WAS the issue that caused the breakup of the Union (not “states’ rights”).

It wasn’t a straight line from the attack on Fort Sumter and the war. The whole period is a bit of mess, with “tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals.” (from publisher’s blurb). Three key figures in the book are the commander of the Fort, Major Robert Anderson (a former slave owner who was sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union), Edmund Ruffin, who promoted secessionist views, and Mary Boykin Chesnut, who saw parallels between slavery and marriage. And of course Lincoln, who spent an incredible amount of time dealing with his secretary of state, William Seward, trying desperately to avert what seemed like an inevitable war  (that ended up killing 750,000 people).

Larson did an incredible amount of research, incorporating diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, and the result is a horror story that ends up being a dark warning that disaster is often not seen coming until it’s too late. Which leads me to my unease: there are just too many parallels between that time and where the country is today. I had to keep putting it down! If the coming election ends up rejecting increasingly strong beliefs in the need to end democracy, I plan to re-read it more carefully. At this time, I just couldn’t bear it. But bravo to Larson. Five stars.