Tag Archives: Erik Larson

01.21.25
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THE DEMON OF UNREST/ERIK LARSON/CODE DUELLO!

An enjoyable, readable academic approach to the lead up of the firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina Harbor and the beginning of the Civil War. THE DEMON OF UNREST by Erik Larson begins with Lincoln’s election and is a study of the pro-war extremists in the South, their hubris and misguided efforts to preserve slavery and the Cotton Kingdom. Cotton was the radicals scepter. A simple agricultural product could bring the North to its knees.

Ironically and timely, Larson also details the southern efforts to derail the counting of the electoral votes that ultimately ensured Lincoln’s victory. Often history proves that nothing is new.

Larson’s storytelling expertly reveals the heroism of Major Robert Anderson, Sumter’s commander and his beleaguered troops. The insight into Lincoln’s thought processes, often overwhelmed and extremely frustrating to his subordinates, is studied in detail. The workings of his ” Team of Rivals” cabinet is revealed as is President Buchanan’s duplicity. The plot to kill Lincoln before he took office somewhere on that long journey from Springfield, Illinois to Washington D.C. was real. Read of the ” real” life of Abner Doubleday.

Those of us who came to know diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut from Ken Burn’s Civil War will read her observations and understand her personality and the Southern pre-war mentality in even greater detail.

My takeaway from this best seller is to recommend it for those who will appreciate it’s detail and come to a greater understanding of Lincoln and the false sense of reality that drove South Carolina and the ultimate secession from the Union of the states that followed.

Also read and recommended by Gordon’s Good Reads, Erik Larson’s IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS

06.17.15
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LUSITANIA-DEAD WAKE

Erick Larson’s best seller Dead Wake, The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, to this reader raises as many questions about the 100-year-old story as it answers.  That in itself gives weight to this great mystery and the continued interest in this often explored maritime and political disaster.

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Larson’s  writing begs for answers to the biggest question of all. Were the British through lack of communication and direct intervention complicit in the sinking of the great ship?  Was the sinking of the Lusitania necessary to bring America to the aid of the British in World War I?

Dead Wake is deep in detail of the broad cross-section of the Lusitania’s passengers which at times in the narrative overshadows the disaster itself. The author’s portrayal of Woodrow Wilson’s courtship of Edith Galt places his ardent pursuit of her within his tortured indecisiveness to bring America into the War.

 

On Friday, May 7, 1915 at 2:10 P.M. the Lusitania was struck by a single torpedo fired by German Submarine U-20. The great liner sank in 18 minutes. Over 1200  souls perished in a chaotic scene so inhuman that German U-Boat 20 Captain Schwieger lowered his periscope unable to view the calamity he had caused.

On April 17, 1917, two years after the sinking of the Lusitania and three additional American ships, Wilson asked a joint session of congress to declare War on Germany. The carnage at sea, however, may  not have been Wilson’s tipping point.  Larson walks the reader through the Zimmerman telegram, intercepted by British code-breakers, seeking to bring Mexico into the War with the promise to bring back to that nation its former lands in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

Larson allows Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill  the last word. ” What he ( Wilson) did in April 1917, could have been done in May, 1915.  And if done then, what abridgment of the slaughter; what sparing of the agony; what ruin, what catastrophes would have been prevented; in how many million homes would an empty chair be occupied today.” I can imagine Churchill, 35 years later, reiterating the same words to FDR as they sat in the White House on the eve of America’s entry into World War II.

To delve further into the sinking of the Lusitania you may wish to read Lusitania, An Epic Tragedy, by Diana Preston.

Another writing of great merit by Erik Larson is In The Garden of Beasts.  For more detail on this book search gordonsgoodreads.com