Books: Born for War

RANGER MOSBY—Virgil Carrington Jones—University of North Carolina Press ($3.50).

In the summer of 1862, a Union cavalry patrol galloping by the deserted station of Beaver Dam, Va. almost rode down a meek-looking little Confederate scout day dreaming in the sun. In his haversack they found a single, unimportant-looking letter and a newly-published copy of Napoleon's Maxims of War. Unimpressed, they read and destroyed the letter, sent the scout off to jail in Washington.

Had they paid more attention to their find, the Union patrol might have shortened the Civil War by several months....