In the aftermath of the 1860 presidential election, the divided United States began to collapse as South Carolina seceded from the Union, followed by another six Southern states. Among the countless contentious points between the Union and the fledgling Confederacy was the existence of a 75-man Federal garrison in Charleston Harbor that would become the flashpoint for civil war. In The Demon of Unrest, Erik Larson weaves a gripping tale of America's slow-motion lurch toward war, placing the reader inside events as they unfold.

In seeking to answer what "malignant magic" could lead Americans to consider the unthinkable—a bloody civil war—Larson prefaces his narrative with the parallels between the "national dread" felt during the run-up to the certification of the Electoral College and the presidential inauguration in 1861 with that during the ...