Fred L. Ray

At its best, this book offers a different perspective on the tactical achievements of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, as the author makes a good case that sharpshooter units organized by the individual brigades (and occasionally at the divisional level) made a contribution out of proportion to their numbers. At its worst, this book reads like a padded history of Robert Rodes' brigade and then division; not that this is necessarily a bad thing. You also have to wonder whether the author is trying a little too hard to make these units seem more modern then they really were, seeing as the War Between the States is still a time of muskets, "picked men," and flank companies, and not of "special operation group"[s] (to point out one of the more jarring anachronisms); though this does place the book in the tradition of trying to draw linkages between the American Civil War and the Great War. One might also wonder about even using the term "shock" in the title, as Ray seems to use it in the broad sense of elite soldiers, rather than as direct assault troops, which the sharpshoorters generally were not. Call it the downside of independent scholarship, as the author seems to have had limited outside input into his work, when it probably would have made for a better book.… (altro)