Readings and discussions featuring today’s best authors, recorded live at Washington DC’s famous Politics & Prose bookstore and presented by Slate.com.

The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War
The previously untold story of the violence in Congress that helped spark the Civil War
In The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the U.S. Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. […Learn More]