Synopses & Reviews
To be read alongside thrilling histories by Nathaniel Philbrick, Hampton Sides, and Rinker Buck, Black Flags, Blue Waters vividly reanimates the "Golden Age" of piracy in the Americas — spanning the late 1600s through the early 1700s — when lawless pirates plied the coastal waters of North America and beyond. "Deftly blending scholarship and drama" (Richard Zacks), best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin illustrates how American colonists at first supported these outrageous pirates in an early display of solidarity against the Crown, not to mention in their own financial interest, and then violently opposed them. Through engrossing episodes of roguish glamour and extreme brutality, Dolin depicts the star pirates of this period, among them towering Blackbeard, illfated Captain Kidd, and sadistic Edward Low, who delighted in torturing his prey. Upending popular misconceptions and cartoonish stereotypes, Black Flags, Blue Waters is a "gripping" (BookPage) and "stirring history that reads like a novel" (Stephen Puleo).
Review
"If you've never read Dolin before, prepare to have a new favorite historian." Jeff Guinn, author of The Road to Jonestown
Review
"Gripping.... Dolin, who has previously written popular narratives about whaling, the fur trade and opium trafficking, finds another can't-miss subject in the adventures of Kidd, Bonnet, Blackbeard and their ilk. Dolin makes it fresh by focusing on the interaction between pirates and the British colonies." BookPage
Review
"Black Flags, Blue Waters is rumbustious enough for the adventure-hungry, but it also hews to the facts as they are known about the pirate lives and activities.... Dolin's book is not only a fine entertainment, but it draws the pirate in a clear light." San Francisco Chronicle
About the Author
Eric Jay Dolin is the best-selling author of Leviathan and Brilliant Beacons. He and his family live in Marblehead, Massachusetts, from which the pirate John Quelch departed in 1703, and returned to in 1704, only to be hanged in Boston.