A History of Pirates - Nigel Cawthorne

Nigel attacks a subject that has not been all that well documented in the past. While there are a few individual pirates who have had their stories extensively documented, the group as a whole has not.

Nigel includes a brief examination of some of the more famous Caribbean pirates; Captain Kidd, Blackbeard and Henry Morgan. The focus, however, is not on the individual pirates themselves but, on their culture, technology and philosophies.

He does a good job of analysing his subject in categories. Explaining the distinction between privateers and buccaneers for instance. He takes his time describing the weapons and the ships, which ones were favored and why.

There is one glaring problem with this treatise. Unfortunately it has nothing to do with the author. It is solely the responsibility of Paul Whittle. Who is Paul Whittle? He is the editor.

Nothing bothers me more than getting caught out by poor editing. Words repeated back to back. Grammatical train wrecks like using their instead of there. An interesting subject and insightful analysis is completely ruined by incompetent editing. You need to have much more than a passing interest in the subject to justify struggling though this volume.