City of Ruin is the story of Charleston's pivotal role in the American Civil War, told largely from the point of view of the local newspaper that stoked the fires of secession, the Charleston Mercury. In 1860, the nation's attention was focused on Charleston, where Mercury publisher Robert Barnwell Rhett had succeeded in his decades-long campaign to convince South Carolina to secede from the Union. This was an act that changed the city, and the nation, forever. When the state became the first to secede, it began a dangerous dance between state militia and federal troops that ended four months later with the battle of Fort Sumter, and the beginning of the bloodiest four years in American history. City of Ruin began as a 20-part serial by historian, author and columnist Brian Hicks that ran in the pages of The Post and Courier from December 2010 to April 2011. Hicks has expanded the series, incorporating additional stories and the perspectives of people on both sides of the fighting. The book not only details the military actions around the city but also how the conflict affected life in Charleston for residents and shopkeepers, as well as the city's sizeable population of slaves and freedmen. This is, in total, the story of Charleston at War.