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Rating: 
Summary: I Like This Pirate Book no matter what the critics say!!
Review: I read, write, and study PIRATES! As with most history, one often does not know what is an actual fact or one person's account of an historical event. This book was written in 1724 towards the end of the "Golden Age of Piracy" that included pirates in the Atlantic, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, Indian Ocean, and Red Sea. This book is Capt. Charles Johnson's account of famous and infamous pirates most people know (Ed Teach--Blackbeard, William Kidd, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read)and many that most people have not heard of (Worley, Anstis, Vane, Lowther, Lowe, etc.). The accounts sound plausible, but it is unknown where the author found him information in the 1700's. I would guess it came orally as well as from newspaper clippings. The book may be difficult for many to read, because it is written in long rambly sentences which was the style then. I would recommend this book to history buffs. For your children I would recommend a delightful novel that combines slave children and pirates: The Diary of a Slave Girl, Ruby Jo that is about Blackbeard's time spent terrorizing Charleston, SC. (Don't worry mom and dad, no one was killed, tortured, or mutilated. The worse thing that happened to Charlestonians was that they were scared they would be killed, tortured, or mutilated by the piraty men!)
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Summary: Defoe? Really?
Review: Officially, this book is taken for the work of Captain Charles Johnson. It is a compilation of narratives about various individual pirates from the Golden Age of Piracy, names like Blackbeard and Bartholomew Roberts (the dread pirate Roberts, from Princess Bride fame), Anne Bonny et al. The conclusion that Defoe and Johnson were one and the same has come under fire these last few years and is not the accepted fact it once was. This text includes portions of the original volumes by Johnson, but not the whole, although it can be argued that it includes the stories that most readers would want. There is also some question about the validity of the stories, but we may never know whether they are true or fiction. P-)
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Summary: Not the Original
Review: This is yet another of the knock-offs of Captain Charles Johnson's General History of Pirates. It includes narratives of all the old favorites: Blackbeard, Kidd, Roberts, Bonny and others. As usual, Johnson's prose is preserved and some of the original illustrations grace the pages. The editor/publisher has includes a glossary, bibliography and notes to the original text. However, the down side of this particular volume is that it includes only a subset of Johnson's original writings. And, there is no added index with which to quickly reference particular names and such. While I don't quite agree that the editor has ruined the original, I do find that this version falls short of its potential. P-)
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