The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson - Book Review
Stellar. Larson vividly depicts Fort Sumter's increasingly untenable position, the chronic ineptitude of the Buchanan administration, and the impossibility of Abraham Lincoln to provide a remedy, while exposing the mock-heroic chivalric mindset of wealthy southern planters who blithely linked slavery, secession, and war as components of a corrupted Code of Honor. A harrowing and timely tale of a country falling apart. ~ Reviewed by Mike Hare