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