Pinkerton's War
The Civil War's Greatest Spy and the Birth of the U.S. Secret Service
2011
First Published
3.75
Average Rating
288
Number of Pages
A thrilling historical account of Allan Pinkerton’s pivotal role in the Civil War and the birth of the Secret Service Scottish immigrant Allan Pinkerton is best known for creating the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which gained renown for solving train robberies in the 1850s and battling the labor movement in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. But the central drama of his career, and the focus of this book, was his work as protector of President Abraham Lincoln and head of a network of Union spies (including himself!) who posed as Confederate soldiers and sympathizers in a deadly cat-and-mouse game. As here told in riveting prose by author Jay Bonansinga, Pinkerton’s politics and abolitionist sympathies drew the attention of supporters of presidential incumbent Abraham Lincoln—and Pinkerton was hired to act as his bodyguard. Pinkerton was asked to organize the U.S. government’s first “Secret Service,” and during the Civil War he managed a network of spies who worked behind confederate lines and tackled espionage at the highest levels in Washington. By war’s end, the agency’s reputation was so well established that it was often hired by the government to perform many of the same duties today assigned to the Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA, and, most recently, the Department of Homeland Security. — Bonansigna is also the author of the novelization of the huge hit television series The Walking Dead, a book titled The Walking Rise of the Governor .
Avg Rating
3.75
Number of Ratings
28
5 STARS
21%
4 STARS
39%
3 STARS
36%
2 STARS
0%
1 STARS
4%
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Author
Jay Bonansinga
Author · 30 books
The national best-selling author of ten acclaimed books – both fiction and non-fiction—Jay Bonansinga has been called “one of the most imaginative writers of thrillers” by the Chicago Tribune. Jay is the holder of a master's degree in film from Columbia College Chicago, and currently resides in Evanston, Illinois, with his wife and two sons. He is also a visiting professor at Northwestern University in their Creative Writing for the Media program.
