Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincolns election and the Confederacys shelling of Sumtera 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.

At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumters 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 inevitableone that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans.

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 brinka dark reminder that we often dont see a cataclysm coming until its too late.