Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln's election and the Confederacy's shelling of Sumter--a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies, and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were "so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them." - amazon.com.