Pick up a copy of The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larsen after April 4 and join the discussion on Thursday, May 1 at 6 p.m. Master storyteller Erik Larsen 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. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were “so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.” Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late. (Crown Publishing) 

Borrowers of The Demon of Unrest do not need a Rockingham Library card. The book discussion is free and open to the public. For more information, email programming@rockinghamlibrary.org, call the library at (802) 463-4270 or stop by the Rockingham Library.