History Book Festival to host talk with author Erik Larson April 30
Bestselling author Erik Larson will discuss his latest book, "The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War,” at 6 p.m., Tuesday, April 30, in the theater at Cape Henlopen High School, Lewes..
Larson will be in conversation with Bryan Russo, an award-winning journalist and program director for Delmarva Public Media.
This special History Book Festival event is produced in cooperation with the Lewes Public Library. A portion of the proceeds will benefit both organizations, helping to provide free literary programming for people of all ages.
“The Demon of Unrest” brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War – a slow-burning crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two.
On Nov. 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.
Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter. At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Maj. 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.
Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers and plantation records, Larson gives readers a political horror story that captures the forces leading America to the brink of war.
Tickets are $35 plus a $2.75 processing fee. To purchase tickets, go to historybookfestival.org.
Larson is the author of six New York Times bestsellers, most recently “The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz,” which he discussed at the 2020 History Book Festival.
An independent nonprofit organization, the History Book Festival produces an annual festival of new works about history, both historical fiction and narrative nonfiction. The festival also takes authors into schools and other nonprofit community organizations and produces single-author events, like this one, throughout the year. This year’s festival will be held Friday to Sunday, Sept. 27 to 29.
