Compelling maritime history.
Although a malefactor throughout history, the stereotypical pirate appeared in the turbulent decades from 1650 to 1730, and this is an entertaining account of that era.
In his first nonacademic book, Blakemore, who teaches social and maritime history, opens with a summary of post-Columbus Europe, when nations seemed mostly at war; even when they were at peace, they burned with envy at Spain, which had hit the jackpot in the New World. Many other European nations’ colonies turned up no mountains of gold and silver, but war offered the opportunity of raiding Spanish cities or seizing their treasure ships, an occupation open to entrepreneurs. Individuals could obtain official permission to attack enemy commerce and sail off in their own “privateers” to do so. Francis Drake, who delivered a fortune in Spanish wealth to Queen Elizabeth, was considered a pirate in Spain for actions that were legal in England. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 vastly reduced conflicts between European imperial powers but left a mass of unemployed “freebooters.” Furthermore, the agreement did not apply in the New World, where maritime plundering continued without official support. Traditional accounts portray pirates as captains of rogue warships preying on peaceful commerce, but it was more profitable, if riskier, to loot seaside towns. Blakemore’s iconic figure is Henry Morgan (1635-1688), a successful Welsh privateer who continued raiding after it became illegal. The so-called golden age of piracy lasted until the 1730s, and the author’s lively account features the well-known (Blackbeard, William Kidd), along with more obscure figures. Blakemore concentrates on the Caribbean and Atlantic sea lanes but does not ignore the rest of the world, and he pays close attention to European governments, which became increasingly concerned with suppressing piracy and, despite severe difficulties, enjoyed some success.
Compelling maritime history.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781639366330
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
MILITARY | EXPEDITIONS | WORLD
The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist (1900–45) collected his work from WWII in two bestselling volumes, this second published in 1944, a year before Pyle was killed by a sniper’s bullet on Okinawa. In his fine introduction to this new edition, G. Kurt Piehler (History/Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville) celebrates Pyle’s “dense, descriptive style” and his unusual feel for the quotidian GI experience—a personal and human side to war left out of reporting on generals and their strategies. Though Piehler’s reminder about wartime censorship seems beside the point, his biographical context—Pyle was escaping a troubled marriage—is valuable. Kirkus, at the time, noted the hoopla over Pyle (Pulitzer, hugely popular syndicated column, BOMC hype) and decided it was all worth it: “the book doesn’t let the reader down.” Pyle, of course, captures “the human qualities” of men in combat, but he also provides “an extraordinary sense of the scope of the European war fronts, the variety of services involved, the men and their officers.” Despite Piehler’s current argument that Pyle ignored much of the war (particularly the seamier stuff), Kirkus in 1944 marveled at how much he was able to cover. Back then, we thought, “here’s a book that needs no selling.” Nowadays, a firm push might be needed to renew interest in this classic of modern journalism.
Pub Date: April 26, 2001
ISBN: 0-8032-8768-2
Page Count: 513
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.
A story of ordinary people, both victims and survivors, thrown into extraordinary history.
Pellegrino says his book is “simply the story of what happened to people and objects under the atomic bombs, and it is dedicated to the hope that no one will ever witness this, or die this way, again.” Images of Aug. 6, 1945, as reported by survivors, include the sight of a cart falling from the sky with the hindquarters of the horse pulling it still attached; a young boy who put his hands over his eyes as the bomb hit—and “saw the bones of his fingers shining through shut eyelids, just like an X-ray photograph”; “statue people” flash-fossilized and fixed in place, covered in a light snowfall of ashes; and, of course, the ghosts—people severely flash-burned on one side of their bodies, leaving shadows on a wall, the side of a building, or whatever stood nearby. The carnage continued for days, weeks, and years as victims of burns and those who developed various forms of cancer succumbed to their injuries: “People would continue to die in ways that people never imagined people could die.” Scattered in these survivor stories is another set of stories from those involved in the development and deployment of the only two atomic weapons ever used in warfare. The author also tells of the letter from Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard to Franklin D. Roosevelt that started the ball rolling toward the formation of the Manhattan Project and the crew conversations on the Enola Gay and the Bockscar, the planes that dropped the Little Boy on Hiroshima and the Fat Man on Nagasaki. We have to find a way to get along, one crew member said, “because we now have the wherewithal to destroy everything.”
This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9798228309890
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
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