"Chasing Ghosts" is a study of unconventional warfare in American military history and its implications for the present and future. John J. Tierney, Jr., examines America's numerous past experiences with this type of warfare from the Revolutionary War, when American irregulars fought the British and Loyalists, through the Vietnam War, which involved the U.S. military in its largest ever counterinsurgency campaigns. Other cases covered in the book include guerrilla fighting during the American Civil War; wars between the United States and Native Americans; the Philippine Insurrection; the campaign against Mexico's Pancho Villa; U.S. occupations of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua; and, other examples from World War II and the Cold War.