Jarrow, Gail. 2010. LINCOLN’S FLYING SPIES: THADDEUS LOWE AND THE CIVIL WAR BALLOON CORPS. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills Press. ISBN 9781590787199 [Suggested Grade Levels 4-12]
REVIEW
This biography chronicles the life of an American inventor and entrepreneur who established a hot air balloon business in 1856. While preparing to attempt a transatlantic flight, Thaddeus Lowe flew from Ohio, making an unscheduled landing in South Carolina. Ironically he was arrested and charged with spying. “No one-- including Thaddeus Lowe-- knew that within three months, the aeronaut would become a Union spy.” Jarrow recounts Lowe’s life, especially the two years he spent organizing and leading a Balloon Corps for Abraham Lincoln that spied on the Confederate army, in 109 pages of scrupulously documented detail. Photographs, period drawings, diagrams, and sidebars accompany accessible text broken into eight chapters. Quality backmatter fills the final 15 pages.
A generation accustomed to Google Earth maps on its phone may find it hard to believe that hot air balloons once stood on the cutting edge of technology and espionage.
CONNECTIONS
Learn more about the Civil War through the Smithsonian’s online collections of portraits, photographs and artifacts.
RELATED BOOKS
Other civil war spy biographies for children and young adults:
Allen, Thomas. HARRIET TUBMAN, SECRET AGENT: HOW DARING SLAVES AND FREE BLACKS SPIED FOR THE UNION DURING THE CIVIL WAR. ISBN 9780792278894
Schoof, Heidi. ELIZABETH VAN LEW: CIVIL WAR SPY. ISBN 9780756509859
By Suzy Parchman
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