Hardly any biography could contain the robust and romantic Jeb Stuart, but John W. Thomason Jr. goes as far as anyone ever has in pinning down the quality of the Confederate cavalry commander. Virginia-bred, James Ewell Brown Stuart graduated from West Point, where he was called "Beauty," and rode with the Mounted Rifles against the Apaches and Comanches on the western frontier. When Virginia seceded from the Union, Jeb Stuart joined the Confederate...