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The Guerrilla Hunters: Irregular Conflicts during the Civil War * Edited by Brian D. McKnight and Barton A. Myers * Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017 * xxii, 400 pp. * $49.95
Civil War historians have long debated guerrilla fighters' role in the conflict; some argue they determined the war's outcome, others insist they were "ancillary" to its conclusion. Seeking to bridge this gap, the fifteen essays included in The Guerrilla Hunters give new perspectives on guerrillas' influence upon the conflict. By exploring afresh participation in, motives for, and effects of irregular fighting, the authors provide new lenses for analyzing guerrilla combat. They broaden the geographic and spatial scope of guerrilla conflict and root it in factors ranging from social geography, to the natural environment, to the household. The Guerrilla Hunters argues that guerrillas' influence redounded far beyond the battlefield, shaping the laws governing war, the spaces in which it was contested, and the psyches of innumerable participants. Irregular fighters'...