Publisher Description
Twelve authors shed new light on the true history and enduring mythology of seventeenth– and eighteenth–century pirates in this anthology of scholarly essays.
The twelve entries in The Golden Age of Piracy discuss why pirates thrived in the seas of the New World, how pirates operated their plundering ventures, how governments battled piracy, and when and why piracy declined. Separating Hollywood myth from historical fact, these essays bring the real pirates of the Caribbean to life with a level of rigor and insight rarely applied to the subject.
The Golden Age of Piracy also delves into the enduring status of pirates as pop culture icons. Audiences have devoured stories about cutthroats such as Blackbeard and Henry Morgan since before Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island. By looking at the ideas of gender and sexuality surrounding pirate stories, the renewed interest in hunting for pirate treasure, and the construction of pirate myths, the contributing authors tell a new story about the dangerous men, and a few dangerous women, who terrorized the high seas.
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About the Authors
David Head teaches history at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. His first book, Privateers of the Americas: Spanish American Privateering from the United States, was honored with the John Gardner Maritime Research Award by the Fellows of the G. W. Blunt White Library at Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut. He received his PhD in history from the University at Buffalo in 2010. In 2016 he was the Amanda and Greg Gregory Family Fellow at the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon.
David Wilson, teacher, scholar, and conductor, is professor emeritus of the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. In addition, he is artistic director/conductor emeritus of the Long Beach Bach Festival and the Camerata Singers of Long Beach. A graduate of the University of the Pacific and University of Illinois, he also studied conducting at the Berkshire Music Festival in Tanglewood, Massachusetts, and the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna. As a recognized expert in eighteenth-century music, Dr. Wilson has conducted hundreds of works of Bach, Handel, and their contemporaries.
Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm was a German philologist, jurist, and mythologist. He is known as the discoverer of Grimm’s law (linguistics), the co-author with his brother Wilhelm of the monumental Deutsches Wörterbuch, the author of Deutsche Mythologie and, more popularly, as one of the Brothers Grimm and the editor of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
About David Colacci
David Colacci is an actor and director who has directed and performed in prominent theaters nationwide. His credits include roles from Shakespeare to Albee, as well as extensive work on new plays. As a narrator, he has won numerous Earphones Awards, earned Audie Award nominations, and been included in Best Audio of the Year lists by such publications as Publishers Weekly, AudioFile magazine, and Library Journal. He was a resident actor and director with the Cleveland Play House for eight years and has been artistic director of the Hope Summer Rep Theater since 1992.