New from bestselling author Erik Larson — The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War, available now at CA Library in print and digital!
Erik Larson brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War — a simmering crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two.
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 Harbor: Fort Sumter.
Master storyteller Eric 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.”
“In his latest appealing historical excavation . . . Larson includes interesting portraits of obscure peripheral figures that enrich the narrative. . . . A welcome addition to any Civil War buff’s library.”—Kirkus Reviews
Get the eBook in Sora | Get the Audiobook in Sora
More works by Erik Larson available in the CA Library collections:
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America — The true tale of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago and the cunning serial killer who used the magic and majesty of the fair to lure his victims to their death. Get the eBook | Get the Audiobook
“Another successful exploration of American history. . . . Larson skillfully balances the grisly details with the far-reaching implications of the World’s Fair.” —USA Today
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin — The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Nazi Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history. Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, Larson provides a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. Get the eBook | Get the Audiobook
“Larson has meticulously researched the Dodds’ intimate witness to Hitler’s ascendancy and created an edifying narrative of this historical byway that has all the pleasures of a political thriller….a fresh picture of these terrible events.” —New York Times Book Review
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania — Larson tells the dramatic story of the 1915 sinking of the British passenger ship Lusitania by a German submarine in thrilling detail, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Get the eBook | Get the Audiobook
“Utterly engrossing…Expertly ratcheting up the tension…Larson puts us on board with these people; it’s page-turning history, breathing with life.” —The Seattle Times