An exploration of some of the irregular fighters from both sides of the Civil War.

O’Donnell, author of more than a dozen books on military history, including The Indispensables and Washington’s Immortals, focuses on combat units who worked in northern Virginia and West Virginia, especially Mosby’s Rangers and their Union counterpart, the Jessie Scouts. “Through their irregular tactics, they changed the course of the war,” writes the author. “They were also, arguably, the US Army’s first modern special operators and counterinsurgency forces.” Much of their work, which O’Donnell covers in often overly excessive detail, involved raids on supply trains and misdirecting or harassing enemy forces to keep them away from the main front. They also acted as spies, often wearing enemy uniforms, risking immediate execution if they were detected doing so. The author also puts the spotlight on actions well away from the battlefield, notably the Confederate Secret Service operation working out of Montreal. There, a group of agents worked to influence the 1864 election, with a strong presence in several western states where disaffection with the war was widespread. They fed antiwar propaganda to northern newspapers and supported “Copperheads,” northern sympathizers with the Confederate cause who were prepared to undertake armed insurrections. O’Donnell offers evidence that John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Lincoln was the result of a well-planned operation funded and supported by the Secret Service and known at the highest levels of the Confederate government. The author offers plenty of material that even Civil War buffs will find new. Unfortunately, those readers will have to slog through a certain amount of cliche-ridden, often repetitious writing. Nonetheless, there is sufficient pay dirt to make the digging worthwhile for readers fascinated by military minutiae.

A revealing history of the largely unknown role of irregular forces and undercover agents in the Civil War.

The Revolutionary War achievements of a Massachusetts regiment that, while not necessarily indispensable, deserves this admirable history.

Prolific military historian O’Donnell begins with a history of Marblehead, Massachusetts, the second-largest New England town during this period. With an economy driven by fishing, its citizens were already primed to dislike British officials, who heavily regulated the trade and outraged its sailors by impressing them into the Royal Navy. Following the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and the oppression of Britain’s “Intolerable Acts,” Marblehead citizens formed their own committees of correspondence, Sons of Liberty, and minutemen—a bumpy process because the city contained a pugnacious and often subversive loyalist faction. By the time fighting broke out in 1775, the town militia consisted of a series of companies that ultimately formed a regiment led by John Glover, “the most experienced officer.” As the author points out, the forces included a surprising number of Blacks and Native soldiers. O’Donnell delivers an expert history of the first two years of the Revolution, with an emphasis on Glover’s regiment. After the siege of Boston, Glover and his troops accompanied George Washington south to New York, where he suffered the disastrous defeat on Long Island. The author demonstrates—and most historians agree—that Washington’s army was saved by a secret overnight evacuation to Manhattan in boats manned by Marblehead seamen. The regiment performed well during Washington’s retreat across Manhattan and New Jersey before truly winning glory by conveying troops across the ice-choked Delaware to the heralded victory at Trenton in December 1776. Other units failed to cross. During this period, many Marbleheaders fitted out vessels as privateers whose captains and crews, many from Glover’s regiment, began seizing British merchant vessels, marking the “origins of the US Navy.” By January, the regiment’s enlistments expired, and many, sick and often wounded, walked the 300 miles back to their now-impoverished city—though some stayed to fight.

A vivid account of an impressive Revolutionary War unit and a can’t-miss choice for fans of O’Donnell’s previous books.

“World War I marked the death of the old world and the emergence of the modern era.” A century later, a prolific military historian revives one of that cataclysm’s most iconic personal stories.

In 1921, one decorated World War I veteran chose the “Unknown Soldier,” and eight others solemnly bore his casket to its tomb in Arlington National Cemetery. Realizing that their remarkable stories would make a compelling background for a history of this monument, O’Donnell (Washington's Immortals: The Untold Story of an Elite Regiment Who Changed the Course of the Revolution, 2016, etc.), in his first book about WWI, strikes gold with vivid accounts of nine often horrendous battlefield experiences. The American Army fought under Gen. John J. Pershing, whom the author admires but also takes to task for some of his flawed convictions that led to immense casualties. Seven of O’Donnell’s soldiers fought bravely, won medals, and often suffered grievous wounds in the iconic battles in Belleau Wood, Saint-Mihiel, and the final, brutal, perhaps unnecessary Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Of the two sailors, one sustained nearly fatal burns but saved his torpedoed ship; the other spent weeks as a prisoner aboard a U-boat and more than a year in a prison camp. The author is good at turning up “untold stories” from America’s wars—five of his previous books include those words in the subtitle—and he accompanies lively, well-researched accounts of these admirable, sometimes-heroic men with histories of our unknown soldiers (there are now three) and a fervent, American-oriented version of the final year of the war (arriving in the nick of time, Pershing’s forces saved the day) that even American scholars no longer hold.

Serious history buffs may roll their eyes, but if they concentrate on the lives of the main characters and less on the patriotic frills, they will not regret the reading experience.

O'Donnell (First SEALs: The Untold Story of the Forging of America’s Most Elite Unit, 2014, etc.) deploys a fusillade of fact and fresh research in a Revolutionary War history rich in irony and event.

A Band of Brothers–like account of the Maryland Immortals, the first elite unit of the Continental Army and one of the few to fight in both the North and South, the book is a thorough chronicle of the nine-year saga of citizen soldiers who fought valiantly but that history had all but forgotten. The author concludes that were it not for this core group's girding of the American Army and its efforts at critical junctures, the war likely would have been lost. He vividly describes a war marked by slaughter, brutality, incompetence, and extraordinary privation, as well as valor, restraint, resourcefulness, and endurance, putting paid to many oversimplified accounts of a complex struggle, especially with regard to the vicious battle between the Whigs and the Tories. O'Donnell also presents a well-delineated cast of unheralded Marylanders (Mordecai Gist, John Eager Howard, William Smallwood, Jack Steward, Otho Holland Williams, and Nathaniel Ramsey), the major American commanders (George Washington, Nathanael Greene, Daniel Morgan, et al.) and their British counterparts (Richard and William Howe, Cornwallis, Henry Clinton, and Banastre Tarleton). Although readers will admire O'Donnell's exhaustive research, skilled organization of the material, and the high readability of the writing, the multitude of armies, brigades, regiments, companies, and divisions, etc., whose exploits he relates can be difficult to keep straight. This is no less true of the differing aggregates of Maryland units that turned the tide in many a battle, not just the 400 men who saved the army from annihilation at the Battle of Brooklyn.

With a firm grasp of tactics, strategy, and the sociopolitical landscape, O'Donnell captures the horror and absurdities of the war better than most, but the density of detail may render it more appealing to confirmed military buffs than general readers.

Inspiring story of the Army’s 2nd Ranger Battalion, Company D (“Dog Company”), from battle historian O'Donnell (Give Me Tomorrow: The Korean War's Greatest Untold Story—The Epic Stand of the Marines of George Company, 2010, etc.).

The 200-plus volunteers who made up the initial complement of Dog Company assembled at Fort Meade in March 1943. The author has worked with veterans of the unit—e.g., the late Len Lomell and other “great Ranger friends”—to trace survivors and organize their stories and memories into the Drop Zone Oral History Project, which provides one of the sources for this book. The soldiers were trained to assault and capture high points from the sea, and the cliffs and heavy gun emplacements at Pointe du Hoc were their target from the beginning. The assignment was considered to be “a suicide mission,” and top officials “projected casualties would top 70 percent.” O'Donnell engagingly describes how a dedicated team was built out of the specialist training it received, but he is at his best presenting the fortunes and shocks of battle as the months of planning and training were blown away in a series of mischances that also fortuitously safeguarded the unit from delayed pre-invasion bombing runs. The author also highlights the courage of Ranger Lt. Bob Edlin and his three companions, who organized “the unbelievably audacious bluff” that secured the surrender of the German garrison of the Lochrist Gun Battery at Brest in August 1944.

A worthy tribute honoring each member of a small group of volunteers who responded to the call of duty.

Military historian O’Donnell (They Dared Return: The True Story of Jewish Spies Behind the Lines in Nazi Germany, 2009, etc.) chronicles a Marine company’s struggles in the toughest campaign of the Korean War.

George Company was thrown together from raw recruits and World War II veterans in the wake of North Korea’s invasion of the south in 1950. When they went ashore at Inchon, most of the men had never seen combat and some barely knew how to handle their weapons. But their arrival tipped the balance, beginning an offensive that drove the North Koreans nearly to the Chinese border by late October—at which point the Chinese army came into the conflict. That invasion set up George Company’s defining moment. Surrounded by overwhelming numbers near the Chosin Reservoir, the company held out with nearly inhuman determination to protect a vital intersection and haven for other cut-off units. Gen. Oliver Smith’s response, when asked if his men would retreat, showed the Marines’ resolve: “Retreat, Hell; we’re just advancing in another direction.” Drawing on interviews with the surviving members of George Company, O’Donnell graphically details the rigors of battle in the brutal Korean winter. First Sgt. Rocco Zullo, a prototypically tough Marine who’d seen action in the Pacific during WWII, is in many ways the hero of the story. He drove his green recruits to remarkable feats of valor until he was wounded in late 1950. His men believed him dead until he showed up at a reunion decades later. While he does not underplay the horrors of the war, and does justice to the lighter moments that men remember years later, the author shines when he captures such catch-in-the-throat moments as when the Fifth and Seventh Marines, coming into base after a harried withdrawal under intense Chinese pressure, marched in singing the Marine Hymn. A final withdrawal, which included crossing a deep chasm on an air-dropped bridge, brought the soldiers to temporary safety, though its members saw more action throughout the war.

George Company’s performance at Chosin Reservoir practically defines heroism. O’Donnell brings it to vivid life.