Pirates: Terror on the High Seas from the Caribbean to the South China Sea (A Worldwide Illustrated History) - Hardcover

David Cordingly

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1572152648 ISBN 13: 9781572152649

Publisher: MISC. ACCOUNT, 1999

Synopsis

The popular image of pirates today-the combined effect of three centuries of books, plays, operas, films, cartoons, and children's games-is extraordinarily powerful.Pirates have become the mythical equivalent of giants, vampires, wizards, or witches, and they no longer seem quite real. Yet they definitely were real-as this first comprehensive, worldwide historical survey makes abundantly clear-and considerably more frightening historically than Long John Silver or Captain Hook. The barnacled sea dogs featured in this fascinating volume well deserved their reputations for bravery, hard drinking, avarica, foul language-and casual violence and cruelty.

About this title

From Booklist:

This worldwide overview of piracy discusses incidents from the earliest days of sea travel to modern times. Julius Caesar was among a group held for ransom by pirates in 78 B.C., and in the Philippines from 1983 to 1994, attacks by pirates armed with automatic rifles averaged nine per month. Accompanying the text are photographs of weapons used, maps of major harbors, and paintings of famous pirates and their ships. Large-scale, detailed drawings of pirate ships include Captain Kidd's vessel from 1695. Although young men generally sought fortune and fame as pirates, a few women also made this choice. Two of the most notorious were Mary Read and Anne Bonny, captured together in 1720 off the coast of Jamaica. They were jailed but not hung (common punishment for Western pirates), because both proved to be pregnant. This book's 11 chapters by notable maritime historians contain 300 full-color illustrations and a lengthy bibliography, all of which supplement the six-part TBS documentary, Pirate Tales, to be broadcast in February. Jennifer Henderson

From School Library Journal:

YA. A comprehensive study of piracy from the 1600s to the 1900s. Each chapter is written by a different expert and covers one aspect of the topic, including piracy in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and, unlike most books on the subject, the pirates of the Far East. A chapter also is devoted to modern pirates and the steps the international community is taking to eliminate them. The book contains many pictures of artifacts, 16th- and 17th-century illustrations, color paintings by noted artists Howard Pyle and Frank Schoonover, and period photographs of pirates and anti-piracy operations from the past 140 years. The text is well written and easy to follow. An ideal companion to Cordingly's Under the Black Flag (Random, 1996).?Robert Burnham, R. E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: MISC. ACCOUNT
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1572152648
• ISBN 13: 9781572152649
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256