William B. Feis offers us the first scholarly examination of the use of military intelligence under Ulysses S. Grant’s command during the Civil War. Feis makes the new and provocative argument that Grant’s use of the Army of the Potomac’s Bureau of Military Information played a significant role in Lee’s defeat. Feis’s work articulately rebuts accusations by Grant’s detractors that his battlefield successes involved little more than the bludgeoning of an undermanned and outgunned opponent.
