Bestselling military historian O’Donnell (The Indispensables) presents the story of guerilla warfare during the Civil War. The work focuses on Lincoln’s handpicked special forces, the Jessie Scouts, and their little-known history, which O’Donnell intertwines with stories about their counterparts, Mosby’s Rangers and the Confederate Secret Service. The Scouts were tasked with secretly collecting intelligence to prevent surprise attacks and relentlessly hunting John Singleton Mosby’s Confederate Rangers from the middle of 1863 until the end of the war. These unconventional “shadow warrior” units engaged in raids and undercover spy missions, forming the foundation and inspiration for Colonel “Wild Bill” Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services and the Green Berets. Award-winning narrator Fred Sanders’s crisp, controlled delivery enhances the vitality of this essential work, conveying O’Donnell’s words with authority and breathing life into a dynamic narrative of special-forces action during the Civil War. VERDICT A ground-breaking addition to Civil War history and a timely update to The Secret War for the Union by Edwin C. Fishel and Mosby’s Confederacy by Thomas J. Evans and James M. Moyer.