A rare and dramatic first-person account by a Union scout who served General William Tecumseh Sherman on his "march to the sea”. More than a chronicle of day-to-day battles and marches, The Perfect Scout is more episodic and includes such additional elements as the story of how he met his wife and close encounters with the enemy.

Anne Sarah Rubin is a professor of history and the associate director of the Imaging Research Center at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is the author of Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman's March and American Memory and the award-winning A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868.

Stephen Murphy is a retired management consultant for small businesses. His wife, Chris, is the great-great-granddaughter of George W. Quimby and helped bring Quimby's unpublished manuscript to the attention of the scholarly community. They live in Seattle, Washington.