This is the second book of Erik Larson's I've read and it was again well written.

The trigger that started what would become the Civil War was the Confederacy's siege of Fort Sumter by Charleston, South Carolina.

Larson does a good job going through what happened leading up to the shelling as the newly seceded states wanted to take control of U.S. forts and armories since they declared their independence from the Union.

Larson uses historical records as well as diaries kept by those involved to go through the different people's motivations and perceived thoughts about what was happening both in Washington and in South Carolina and the Confederacy.

As someone who has gotten more interested in history as I've gotten older, I would recommend this to anyone wanting to learn more about the Civil War and the run up to the hostilities.

Here lay the greatest of ironies: In thirty-four hours of some of the fiercest bombardment the world had ever seen, no one was killed or even seriously injured, yet this bloodless attack would trigger a war that killed more Americans than any other conflict in the country's history.