The Demon of Unrest

The Demon of Unrest had been on my to-read list for a while, and the end of October/Start of November 2024 suddenly felt like the right time to read about Lincoln's election and inheritance of a divided America, and how the American Civil War broke out.

I am not implying that there are specific parallels to be drawn between 1860 and today, none that I want to explore. It was an interesting time in history, written about in an engaging and well structured way by Erik Larson.

While much of the book's material was sourced from Lincoln's papers and from the records of those facing the cannons on either side of the water of Charleston Harbour, the era was enriched further by excerpts from the diaries of "normal" people such as Mary Boykin Chesnut. And just like I did in 2020 during the Churchill book I found myself feeling like I should put more effort into my own diary journal in case Erik Larson or some future GPT version of him needed some source material for some book about events in 2025. But what significant world event would I need to add my observations on? And how was anything I wrote in Adelaide going to have relevance to that event? It would take some kind of major, global history making thing to happen for me to have any relevance.

Hmmm…