Susan steve inskeep, your book is entitled imperfect union how john and Jesse Fremont helped cause the civil war. Why did you believe the story of a 19thcentury power couple would have resonance today . Steve it is a story leading up to the civil war when the nation was very clearly divided into two political camps. We live in a politically divided time, although i dont want to imply we are headed for civil war. I dont know what we are headed toward, but there is resonance in the way we have red and blue states today. There were northern and Southern States than that were fundamentally divided over this giant issue of slavery. There are other things. The 1840s and 1850s was a time of enormous technological change. Cities east of the mississippi were connected and there was National Conversation which becomes part of the story i tell. It turns out these communication devices that were designed to bring people closest together drove them farther apart. They were horrified by what people