Sky sailors
Subtitle: true stories of the balloon era
By: David L. Bristow
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 134
ISBN-13: 9780374370145
Subjects: Juvenile literature; Balloonists; Biography; History
Description: This volume traces the evolution of the balloon era, from 1783-1912, and examines the exploits of the men and women who flew in them, parachuted from them, and sometimes died in them.

For more than a century before airplanes, people explored the sky in balloons. From 1783 to the early 1900s, aeronauts flew into storms, crossed large bodies of water, sailed over enemy armies, and soared to deadly altitudes. Illustrated in full color with dramatuc period artwork, here are the stories of the pioneers of human flight, such as daredevil Sophie Blanchard from Napoleon's France, and Solmon Andree, who lead an aerial assault on the North Pole in 1897. --from publisher description
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [131]-134.
Table of contents: title: The black moon: the first balloon flights (France, 1783); title: Queen of the night sky: Sophie and Jean-Piere Blanchard (France, 1784-1819); title: Splashdown in Lake Erie: John Steiner (United States, 1857); title: The children are gone!: Martha and David Harvey (United States, 1858); title: The long voyage: the flight of the balloon Atlantic (United States, 1859); title: To the top of the sky: Coxwell and Glaisher's record altitude (United Kingdom, 1862); title: The siege of Paris: the balloon-and-pigeon post (France, 1870-1871); title: The North Pole balloon: Salomon Andrees's expedition (Sweden and the Arctic Ocean, 1897); title: Parachute girl: Dolly Shepherd (United Kingdom, 1903-12).