Description: Twelve scholars of piracy show why pirates thrived in the New World seas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century empires, how pirates operated their plundering ventures, how governments battled piracy, and when and why piracy declined.
Brief description: DAVID HEAD is a lecturer of history at the University of Central Florida and the author of Privateers of the Americas: Spanish American Privateering from the United States in the Early Republic (Georgia).
Review Quotes: Just when you thought the Age of Depp was waning, along comes The Golden Age of Piracy. This superb collection harnesses the best and most innovative scholarship on Atlantic piracy, ranging from the real and material to the pirate's troubled public image. Historians, literary scholars, and economists all weigh in on why piracy took off in American waters after the English seizure of Jamaica and why it was largely suppressed within a few generations. . . . There is something here for everyone, more than enough to inspire a new cinematic franchise.--Kris Lane "author of Pillaging the Empire: Global Piracy on the High Seas, 1500-1750"