CompleteMartialArts.com - A General History of the Pyrates
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List Price: $19.95
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Manufacturer: Dover Publications
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.164
EAN: 9780486404882
ISBN: 0486404889
Label: Dover Publications
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 800
Publication Date: 1999-01-26
Publisher: Dover Publications
Studio: Dover Publications
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Editorial Reviews:
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Immensely readable history by the author of Robinson Crusoe incorporates the author’s celebrated flair for journalistic detail, and represents the major source of information about piracy in the early 18th century. Defoe recounts the daring and bloody deeds of such outlaws as Edward Teach (alias Blackbeard), Captain Kidd, Mary Read, Anne Bonny, many others. New Introduction provides insights into the origins and significance of this important historical work. Commentary and Notes. Indexes.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A General History of the Pyrates
Comment: A General History of the Pyrates is good reading! Great history on famous pirates!
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Fun
Comment: This book is written in a different kind of English than we what are used to. As such, this book is amazing. Filled to the brim with pirate information, boat information, etc, this is a good book for anyone who really is interested in pirates.
For those who are interested in pirates purely at a humorous level, this isn't the book you should go with. This is packed with real information in older English, and is really intended for those who wish to know more about pirates and how they lived.
This book helped my understanding of pirates greatly! I recommend to anyone who is interested in trying to know more about those scalawags of the sea.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Daniel Defoe vs Captain Charles Johnson
Comment: I compared this book with the pirate history published by Captain Charles Johnson. Daniel Defoe is definitely Captain Johnson. The one dissimilarity in the History of the pirate Gow is Johnson says he is John Smith alias Gow, while Daniel Defoe calls him the pirate Gow aka Smith. Gow is derived from the Erse name Gobha which translates to Blacksmith or Smith. So both version are in fact correct. But why the difference? Maybe editorial?
Customer Rating:
Summary: "The" history of Pirates
Comment: "Under the Black Flag", and all the rest of the pirate history books used this one as their basic reference. It's a lot of material, and took me several months to read as I'd read single captain's history before turning the lights out for the night. The stories are not watered down, there is enough murder, mayhem, robbery, thuggery, and general bad treatment of one person against another to fill years of "Pirates of the XXXX" movies with Johnny Depp scripts.
I did like this book, even though after about the 200th captain's adventure its sort of repetitive narrative. The other interesting thing was that amid this culture of mayhem there was a strong democratic theme. Captains and bosun's are elected positions on most of the boats! Colonies elect a "governor", they have jury trials to settle disputes and yet the economy revolves around ripping off passing merchant boats.
As for whether "Captain Johnson" or "Daniel Defoe" wrote the text, I can't tell. But it doesn't matter, there are no copyright royalties to be paid to the author at this point. The stories are just as good. Anyone who is really interested in Pirates would enjoy this book. (Although I got my copy from the public library.) I especially found the history of Annie Bonny and Mary Reed to be absolute soap opera story. History is stranger than fiction.
(Oh and read Richard Zack's book on Captain Kidd, Defoe got it wrong, and Zack's found the original documents to explain what really happened.) Zack's book is easier to read too.
Customer Rating:
Summary: More illustrative of Defoe's life than Piracy
Comment: The dearth of primary sources have encouraged "scholars" to grasp onto the Furbanks / Owens short de-atrribution, which is basically an ad hominem attack against the preeminent 20th century Defoe scholar Moore. The tales in this book are wild and outlandish, much like Defoe's life. Full of get-rich quick schemes, bankruptcy, and being pilloried, he did not lack for his own source material. So enjoy the tales, picture a proto-democracy where illiterate desperate men create "articles" of piracy that would make a modern day attorney proud, read some more Defoe and make up your own mind. Clear sailing!
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