bookheaven | Pirates: Scourge of the Seas

Pirates: Scourge of the Seas by John Reeve Carpenter

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Content -wise 3.5 stars, rounded up thanks to the abundant and excellent art on every page and the fact they made an effort to have the pages look like old vellum like a pirate's map. (Oddly enough book was commissioned/printed expressly for Barnes & Nobles' bargain book kiosk) This is written, I think, with the middle grade/young adult in mind, so you had to read Treasure Island in school and now you're interested in pirates....

It's a brief look at all things pirates: how they became one (hint, most had no choice), their food, their clothes, the boats, the weapons all of it. It's almost done in an encyclopedia form with each item getting a paragraph or two. Later in the book we have the rogues' gallery of the most famous of the pirates (those are two pages each) and a look at fictional pirates and how they differed wildly from reality.

It's a very nice sampler, a way to ease into the subject matter. It can be a spring board to a deeper dive. Cheng I Sao for example would be one I'd like to read more on.

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