Get some perspective, folks.  Current political ying/yangs have nothing on the hostility, close-mindedness, and belligerence in the USA prior to, throughout, and following the Civil War. The racing and rabid events between Lincoln’s election and Fort Sumpter read as a page-turner adventure story not a history casebook. Nevertheless, before thinking, “I don’t want to read something so down-beat”, ask yourself:

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• How did the media, incendiary as never before,  fan the flames of secession?
• And why was the unproductive Congress AWOL during this crisis? And lame duck President Buchanon, where was he?
• Did you know that a new, militant generation of rowdy young men– the Wide Awakes –took to the streets and secured unknown Lincoln’s election?
• Do you retain only a smokey memory that the Dred Scott decision upheld slavery?  (The legal finding is sadly much more devasting.)
• Why was the non-slave holding North nearly as beholden to slavery as the slave-holding south? (Hint: it’s more than weaving cotton in the Northern mills.)

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If you can’t fully answer these questions, then give in to the grip of Eric Larson’s fast-reading narrative and join the Chamber to compare-and-contrast events, then and now.