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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2024
Erik Larson's "The Demon of Unrest," his latest best seller, is an unbiased, decidedly factual history of the taking of Fort Sumter by the nascent Confederacy in April, 1861. His day to day recounting can be a tad tedious at times; his slow paced way of story telling provides an inherent honesty, the development of background and a build up of color and detail to the eventual surrender of the Fort in mid April, 1861. His cast of characters is wide ranging and superb in context; Presidents Lincoln and Buchanan, the warriors, Major Robert Anderson, Abner Doubleday, PGT Beauregard, and then the Secessionists, James Hammond and Edmund Ruffin, along with the essayist, Mary Chestnut. Larson never preaches, his storyline and the marshaling of the facts is sufficient for readers to judge for themselves about this seminal event in American history, its sparking role of the clash between South and North, and, in the end, the abolition of slavery, as the real cause of this War.
