So, apparently they just don’t teach you anything in American history classes because there was a lot of new information in this book for all of us.

Erik Larson wrote this book after January 6th and intended it to be read ahead of the November 2024 election. The parallels between the lead-up to the Civil War and present-day America are disquieting and numerous. But while they are unnerving, they are also reassuring since many (though, not all) of us came away from this book thinking that the U.S. is less likely to have a civil war today than we did going into it.

There is a lot about the old South that none of us had fully considered, from the blatant hypocrisy of the slave owners and the prevalence of fake news to the apparently rampant incest and a commitment to medieval European ideals of honor and chivalry (still not sure how those go together).

Larson is famous for mainlining raw historical documents so he can turn them into a story. This often results in fascinating material, and while this book was highly engaging at points, it was also exceptionally mundane a lot of the time. 

This book is often informative but rarely entertaining. It’s so long we had to check to make sure people had the grit to finish. Erik Larson is a good writer and an even better researcher, but he needs a skilled editor to cut out about 30% of the content in this bad boy. 

If you like American history and long-ass books, this epic tale may be for you, but if you don’t like American history, let us save you some time: Slavery was complicated and wrong, don’t fuck your family members, President Buchanan was the worst President in history, and please make sure you get your news from multiple fact-checked sources with different perspectives. Thank God the North won.

BUY THIS BOOK