BookPeople welcomes Erik Larson in conversation with Lauren Larson to celebrate the paperback release of The Demon of Unrest.

Please welcome Erik Larson and Lauren Larson to celebrate the paperback release of The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War!

This event is ticketed.

Start time: 6:00 P.M.
Run time: 45-60 minutes, followed by a personalization line.
Location: Central Presbyterian Church
Please note that there is no designated parking for this venue so if you do park, we recommend you follow all signage, warnings, and fees.

Your ticket includes a pre-signed paperback copy of The Demon of Unrest. The author will be personalizing copies of the book after the speaking portion of the event.

For high volume events, post-talk signing lines can become very long. For such events, we recommend arriving and checking in to the event early as that will get you into an earlier signing group.

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Guidelines:

Ticket-holders will be checked in starting at 5:30 P.M. Please have a copy of your ticket available (either printed out or on your phone) for check in.
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About the book:

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War in this “riveting reexamination of a nation in tumult” (Los Angeles Times).

“A feast of historical insight and narrative verve . . . This is Erik Larson at his best, enlivening even a thrice-told tale into an irresistible thriller.”—The Wall Street Journal

A PARADE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky 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.

Master storyteller Erik Larson 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.”

At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major 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. 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 inevitable—one 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 brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.

About the author:

Erik Larson is the author of six New York Times bestsellers, including The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, which examines how Winston Churchill and his “Secret Circle” went about surviving the German air campaign of 1940-41. Larson’s The Devil in the White City is set to be a Hulu limited series; his In the Garden of Beasts is under option by Tom Hanks for a feature film. He recently published an audio-original ghost story, No One Goes Alone, which has been optioned by Chernin Entertainment, in association with Netflix. His Thunderstruck has been optioned by Sony Pictures Television for a limited TV series. Larson lives in Manhattan with his wife, who is a writer and retired neonatologist; they have three grown daughters.

About the moderator:

Lauren Larson is a writer at Texas Monthly, previously an editor for GQ. She writes celebrity profiles, feature stories, and essays.

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Thank you for supporting Erik Larson, Lauren Larson, and your local independent bookstore!