Fishel sure makes you work for the information... there's not a fact that isn't cited three, four or five times in following chapters. He does bring together much disparate information about the development of a military intelligence service during the Civil War, that's for sure. He has done excellent research, and argues his case persuasively. If he'd only had an editor, though, this massive volume would have come it at a third of its weight and would have been a better book. A serious lack was any discussion of military intelligence in the Western campaigns. Whether this is due to a lack of data or a lack of interest on the author's part is unclear... it just doesn't show up. If you're interested in precision on matters concerning the Civil War in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, this book has lots to offer. But brother, are you going to have to work for it!

This book is in many ways an excellent analysis of America's first true military intelligence organization, and is chock-full of well-documented facts. Many of these are well-known elsewhere, but some analysis leads to new insights. Unfortunately, this book is poorly organized and difficult to read, almost painfully so at times. If you're really interested in the American Civil War or the history of military intelligence, this is a must-read. Unfortunately, it's far from a light bedtime book.

I will praise this book first for a comprehensive coverage of what the author found. The story of Gen. McClellan's over-caution and Allen Pinkerton's overestimation is well known. And has been published before but not in such well noted detail. That said, the first third of the book could well have been published independently so that the reader would not get a sore chest from propping it up! On the other hand, the great virtue of this work is the thorough mining of the later material concerning the period after the establishment of a military-led true intelligence organization. The other side of this same period in this area has been covered in the excellent study Come Retribution which appeared earlier. The history of operations in the Western Theatre is yet to be written. My greatest disappointment is the author's relegating of "lesson learned" to an appendix and his omission of modern tradecraft comparisons. As it was, the lessons we learned in the Civil War, when we fought essentially ourselves still had general relevence thirty some years later in the War With Spain and even later on the Mexican Border. (I wrote my thesis on the latter era.) The text, Service of Security and Information, written by Col. Wagner, used at the Fort Leavenworth schools, in the 1890s was based on our experience in the Civil War. Slightly revised after the war with Spain, the work remained in use til the Great War. But, perhaps, pointing out this continuaton of military thought was not the author's intention. As to the unfortunate title which promises more than the book delivers, I place that blame on the publishers. This book is so much better than the other recent book on Civil War spies which simply rehashes all the old tales about Crazy Betty, Belle Starr, et al. It's just a pity it's so hard to read. I never did finish it. I read the conclusions, and the appendices, and, frankly, there's just more here than I wanted to know.