Broad of beam for being so shallow of draft but seaworthy for all its distinctly romanticized picture.
A slender but sweeping survey of piracy on the high seas: in real life, from ancient times to today; in legend and fiction, from Long John Silver to Capt. Jack Sparrow and Jacky Faber.
Kaplan opens with the now-customary reference to Pirates of the Caribbean—but then goes on to introduce real 17th-century freebooter Henry Avery, who retired wealthy and unpunished after a series of dramatic exploits. That pattern holds throughout, as accounts of the careers of high-profile buccaneers and less well-known but no less daring figures (not all of whom came to bad ends) alternate down through history and also in printed works, films, video games, and television. The author plays on the contrasting popular perceptions of pirates as both brutal criminals and “lovable antiheroes,” even to the extent of portraying today’s Somali pirates in a sympathetic light. A judicious selection of photos and period images adds visual color, sidebars cast glances on topics ranging from sea shanties to digital piracy, and starter lists of print and Web resources will get readers eager to dig into this popular topic underway.
Broad of beam for being so shallow of draft but seaworthy for all its distinctly romanticized picture. (map, index, glossary, endnotes) (Nonfiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4677-5252-7
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Twenty-First Century/Lerner
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
Tricked out with a ribbon, foil highlights on the jacket and portrait galleries at each chapter’s head by Ireland’s leading illustrator, this handsome package offers British readers an orgy of self-congratulatory historical highlights. These are borne along on a tide of invented epithets (“ ‘Foreigners!’ spat Boudicca”), fictive sound bites (“Down with the Committee of Safety!”) and homiletic observations (“By beating Napoléon the British showed how strong they were when they worked together”). Aside from occasional stumbles like the slave trade or the Irish potato famine, Britain’s history—from the Magna Carta to the dissolution of the biggest empire “there had ever been”—unfolds as a steady trot toward ever-broader religious toleration, voting rights and personal freedom. American audiences will likely be surprised to see Mary Queen of Scots characterized as “one of the most famous of all monarchs,” and the Revolutionary War get scarcely more play than the Charge of the Light Brigade. It makes a grand tale, though, even when strict accuracy sometimes takes a back seat to truthiness. Includes timelines, lists of monarchs and an index but no source lists. (Nonfiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5122-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2010
Sandwiched between telling lines from the epic of Gilgamesh (“…the warrior’s daughter, the young man’s bride, / he uses her, no one dares to oppose him”) and the exposure of a migrant worker–trafficking ring in Florida in the mid-1990s, this survey methodically presents both a history of the slave trade and what involuntary servitude was and is like in a broad range of times and climes. Though occasionally guilty of overgeneralizing, the authors weave their narrative around contemporary accounts and documented incidents, supplemented by period images or photos and frequent sidebar essays. Also, though their accounts of slavery in North America and the abolition movement in Britain are more detailed than the other chapters, the practice’s past and present in Africa, Asia and the Pacific—including the modern “recruitment” of child soldiers and conditions in the Chinese laogai (forced labor camps)—do come in for broad overviews. For timeliness, international focus and, particularly, accuracy, this leaves Richard Watkins’ Slavery: Bondage Throughout History (2001) in the dust as a first look at a terrible topic. (timeline, index; notes and sources on an associated website) (Nonfiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-88776-914-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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