History Book Club of Los Angeles

Thank you for your votes for our next book. The winner is the Erik Larson bestseller about the Civil War--The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War. We'll meet on Jan. 10 at 12:30 PM to discuss the book.

Note: This date is tentative and may need to be adjusted to a later Sunday depending on the availability of the organizers.

To join the discussion, please RSVP for the meetup. If you do RSVP and find you're unable to attend, please update your attendance. No shows will be removed from the group.

From Amazon: (https://amzn.to/3UJcH7x)
On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the 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 Erik 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.

At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between them. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous secretary of state, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable—one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans.