Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age

Villains of All Nations explores the 'Golden Age' of Atlantic piracy (1716-1726) and the infamous generation whose images underlie our modern, romanticized view of pirates.

Rediker introduces us to the dreaded black flag, the Jolly Roger; swashbuckling figures such as Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard; and the unnamed, unlimbed pirate who was likely Robert Louis Stevenson's model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island.

This history shows from the bottom up how sailors emerged from deadly working conditions on merchant and naval ships, turned pirate, and created a starkly different reality aboard their own ships, electing their officers, dividing their booty equitably, and maintaining a multinational social order. The real lives of this motley crew-which included cross-dressing women, people of color, and the'outcasts of all nations'-are far more compelling than contemporary myth.

• A General History of the Pyrates (Dover Maritime)
• The Buccaneers (Classics)
• Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader
• Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates
• Republic of Pirates
• Pirates in the Age of Sail (A Norton Casebook in History)
• Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World
• Saltwater Slavery ? A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora: 0
• Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700?1750
• The Invisible Hook ? The Hidden Economics of Pirates