The Unvanquished: The Untold Story of Lincoln’s Special Forces, the Manhunt for Mosby’s Rangers, and the Shadow War That Forged America’s Special Operations

The earliest modern U.S. special forces first emerged during the Civil War, according to this rip-roaring account from bestseller O’Donnell (The Indispensables). He chronicles the spy missions and covert ops of the Jessie Scouts, Mosby’s Rangers, Blazer’s Scouts, the Confederate Secret Service, and other irregular units, highlighting their development of techniques that form the bedrock of today’s unconventional warfare. The Union Army’s Jessie Scouts were a handpicked unit who donned Confederate uniforms to go behind enemy lines for intelligence gathering and kidnapping missions. A squad led by Lt. Richard Blazer peeled off from the Scouts to hunt down the Confederate Army’s premier guerilla unit, the Mosby’s Rangers; O’Donnell credits Blazer with the astute use of “shoe-leather detective work” to lead his Scouts to their quarry. Nimbly intertwining the stories of these scouts and spies in brief and breezy chapters, O’Donnell emphasizes the innovativeness exhibited by the era’s unconventional forces despite a traditional military establishment who frowned on their “ungentlemanly” behavior. He also provides fascinating analysis of the sinister machinations of the Canadian-based Confederate Secret Service as they “hatched plots” to “rob Northern banks,” “burn cities to the ground,” influence the 1864 presidential election, and even kidnap Abraham Lincoln. It’s an entertaining history of the “shadow war” that defined the future of American special operations. (May)