"Bitterly Divided", a history of the South during the American Civil War.
High points: a majority opposed secession but had it rammed down their throats by vote fraud, crooked delegates, and outright coercion. Only a third of the Confederate Army was on the field at the end of the war, most of the rest AWOL. The planter class that wanted secession insisted on growing cash crops while the soldiers and public were starving. Some states were in virtual civil war within their borders.
EDIT: Barbara Demick, "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea". Individual stories of chaste romances and attempts at advantageous marriages that might have come out of Jane Austen, followed by societal collapse in the famine. Extensively researched. Image that stuck in my mind: a doctor Demick interviewed found, at the first building she saw after sneaking across the border to China, a luxury she could only have dreamed about at home -- a bowl of rice, with chunks of meat. She couldn't figure out why something so valuable was left unattended on the floor. She figured it out an instant before the dog barked to chase her away from its dinner.
