Dear Great Book Guru,  I’m looking for a great Father’s Day gift for my dad. I know he loves non-fiction, particularly something about American history.  Anything new you would recommend?  A Good Daughter

Dear Good Daughter,  I have a great recommendation: Erik Lawson’s newest book: THE DEMON OF UNREST.  Lawson has written many books of non-fiction all of which read like mesmerizing novels and this latest is no exception. The book covers the few months between Lincoln’s election and the beginning of the Civil War with the fall of Fort Sumter. Lincoln, Jefferson Davies, and other familiar figures play decisive roles, but it is the little known characters Lawson introduces that make this an unforgettable, hard to put down book. One of these was Henry Villard, a German teenager, who ran away to America,  assuming  a classmate’s identity so he could not be traced. He began writing for various American newspapers, exposing the horrors of slavery and eventually helped in the election of Lincoln.  He went on to marry the daughter of the anti-slavery campaigner Willian Llyod Garrison and acquired the New York Evening Post and The Nation magazine and various railroad and steamship companies.  Another little known but crucial player in Lawson’s book was Mary Chesnut who describes the night leading up to the siege of Charleston with its sumptuous dinner: the pate fois gras, biscuit glace, and champagne frappe.  These exquisite details are described as a backdrop to the monumental forces at work leading the nation into a war where there were 750, 000 casualties. The book is made up of these fascinating characters who played roles small and large in this immense tragedy.  Highly recommended!