cover image Yank and Rebel Rangers: Special Operations in the American Civil War

Yank and Rebel Rangers: Special Operations in the American Civil War

Robert W. Black. Pen and Sword Military, $32.95 (320p) ISBN 978-1-5267-4444-9

Black (The Battalion), a veteran of the U.S. Army Rangers, extrapolates a lineage of the special forces group back to the American Civil War in this accessible history. The book focuses primarily on those who led Confederate units that performed missions behind the lines of conventional armies, harassing and impeding operations, such as Confederate cavalry commander Turner Ashby, whose forces stopped trains and blew up a canal dam. Black describes how these operations were organized, planned, and executed, and how they caused problems for more conventional commanders. The author stretches the term “ranger” further than most historians would condone (including both conventional cavalry, on the one hand, and guerilla fighters, on the other—and even the Blackhawk service of future president Abraham Lincoln). But this entertaining book’s tales of unconventional Civil War adventure will appeal to the general reader. (June)