Erik Larson in conversation with JK Nickell, Texas Monthly 

Master storyteller Erik Larson returns with The Demon of Unrest, a saga of hubris, heartbreak, and heroism at the dawn of the Civil War. This suspense-filled narrative illuminates the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War—a slow-burning crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two. 

Larson offers a gripping account of these chaotic months. Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, he 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. 

Erik Larson is the author of six New York Times bestsellers, most recently The Splendid and the Vile, 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 in development at Disney Studios, and In the Garden of Beasts is in development with StudioCanal and Playtone. 

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Member Tickets

$40 (includes a copy of "The Demon of Unrest")

Public Tickets

$43 (includes a copy of "The Demon of Unrest")