So, before we get into the specifics of the book. Here is a little about the author, Angus Konstam is an internationally renowned historian and one of the world’s leading experts on pirates and pirate history with well over 100 books to his name. 60 of his publications have been written for Osprey with 3 of his books being best sellers. He is a formal Naval officer and has worked as an underwater archaeologist, he now lives and works in Edinburgh, Scotland as a fulltime author.

Here we breakdown the contents of the book.

1. Chapter one: Pirates of the ancient world
2. Chapter two: Medieval pirates
3. Chapter three: The sea dogs of the Renaissance
4. Chapter Four: Mediterranean Corsairs
5. Chapter Five: The Buccaneers
6. Chapter Six: The Golden Age of Piracy
7. Chapter Seven: The Pirate Round
8. Chapter Eight: The last of the Pirates
9. Chapter Nine: The Chinese Pirates
10. Chapter Ten: Modern Piracy
11. Chapter Eleven: Pirates in Fiction
12. Conclusion
13. Notes
14. Select Bibliography
15. Index

About the Book

So, what got me into wanting this book and piracy is from watching the Netflix series Black Sails not pirates of the Caribbean. I really got into learning about Blackbeard even if the Tv show was highly fictionalized. What I love about this book which took me a little time to read was how in Depth this book is , it’s a very detailed chronological order and goes through the periods, names, and policies in place not just from the earlier periods but up to the modern times which proves piracy will always be a problem as long as there is a profit to be made from it. Angus has done an amazing job of breaking everything down and providing ample amounts of color and black and white pictures/illustrations.

Chapter’s 5 and 6 are what the majority of us are familiar with when it comes to piracy and the characters and flags of those time frames…..black Bart, Henry Morgan, Calico Jack, black beard….get my drift lol, these chapters where the kinda answer the myths type chapters that dispelled what we all thought pirates of those times where about and what we assumed we thought we knew about them.

I was especially interested in the Chinese piracy portion; I honestly had no clue that pirates in china let alone in that region honestly existed let alone had the largest confederations of pirates ever at over 150k strong in numbers! They started off as just extorting villages before taken on full fledged acts of violence to the point of being powerful enough that the Chinese rulers just turned a blind eye.

This book goes into the personal accounts of not just the victims of piracy but the pirates themselves, they’re descendants and the governments in who tried to curb the pirates and the act itself. Present day photos of previous pirate enclaves build the excitement when your like OMG I been there before lol. They had to be resourceful not only to avoid capture and a guaranteed hasty execution but to also be profitable.

This book is approximately 336 beautiful pages of enjoyment, I can honestly say this is one of my favorite books and a must for any shipbuilders and lovers of naval adventure. I honestly don’t believe there is a better reference book or a reason for that matter on why anyone would not love this book in their collection. Its very engaging and has the right balance of material mixed with visuals.

I want to than IPMS and Osprey for the opportunity to review this book. Mr. Konstam thank you for an amazing book, I look forward to reading some of your other publishing’s. Thank you all so much for the great read!