“This is the most authoritative and highly literate account of these pernicious people that I have ever read.”—Patrick O'Brian“[A] wonderfully entertaining history of pirates and piracy . . . a rip-roaring read . . . fascinating and unexpected.”—Men's JournalThis rollicking account of the golden age of piracy is packed with vivid history and high seas adventure. David Cordingly, an acclaimed expert on pirates, reveals the spellbind...

Patrick O'Brian, C.S. Forester and Captain Marryat all based their literary heroes on Thomas Cochrane, but Cochrane's exploits were far more daring and exciting than those of his fictional counterparts. He was a man of action, whose bold and impulsive nature meant he was often his own worst enemy. Writing with gripping narrative skill and drawing on his own travels and original research, Cordingly tells the rip-roaring story of a flawed Romantic hero who helped define his age.

For centuries the sea has been regarded as a male domain. Fisherman, navy officers, pirates, and explorers roamed the high seas while their wives and daughters stayed on shore. Oceangoing adventurers and the crews of their ships were part of an all-male world — or were they?In this illuminating historical narrative, maritime scholar David Cordingly shows that in fact an astonishing number of women went to sea in the great age of sail. Some traveled as the wives or mistresses of cap...

From renowned pirate historian David Cordingly, author of Under the Black Flag and film consultant for the original Pirates of the Caribbean, comes the thrilling story of Captain Woodes Rogers, the avenging nemesis of the worst cutthroats ever to terrorize the high seas. Once a marauding privateer himself, Woodes Rogers went from laying siege to laying down the law. During Britain’s war with Spain, Rogers sailed for the crown in sorties against Spanish targets in the Paci...

The amazing true story of Blackbeard, Calico Jack and all the other pirates of the Caribbean and Captain Woodes Rogers, the privateer turned governor of the Bahamas, who brought them to book.'Both a brilliant idea and an engrossing book that tells the story of a ship of the line in Nelson's day' Bernard Cornwell, Books of the Year, Mail on Sunday'David Cordingly is a brilliant historian: authoritative but easy to read, with...

For centuries, the sea has been regarded as a male domain, but in this illuminating historical narrative, maritime scholar David Cordingly shows that an astonishing number of women went to sea in the great age of sail. Some traveled as the wives or mistresses of captains; others were smuggled aboard by officers or seamen. And Cordingly has unearthed stories of a number of young women who dressed in men’s clothes and worked alongside sailors for months, sometimes years, without ever reveali...

For this rousing, revisionist history, the former head of exhibitions at England's National Maritime Museum has combed original documents and records to produce a most authoritative and definitive account of piracy's "Golden Age." As he explodes many accepted myths (i.e. "walking the plank" is pure fiction), Cordingly replaces them with a truth that is more complex and often bloodier.

The timely story of how the forces of change converge on a small tribe of Niaruna Indians living in the heart of the Amazon rain forest. In addition to being a prophetic commentary on emerging threats to the environment, and the troublesome encroachment of the modern world on traditional cultures, the novel is a suspenseful adventure story about two men striving to find meaning in a world not their own.

What lights the spark that ignites a revolution?What was it that, in 1775, provoked a group of merchants, farmers, artisans and mariners in the American colonies to unite and take up arms against the British government in pursuit of liberty?Nathaniel Philbrick, the acclaimed historian and bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea and The Last Stand, shines new and brilliant light on the momentous beginnings of the American Revolution, and thos...

""Deeply affecting. . . . Like the best novels of Nadine Gordimer, it makes us appreciate the dynamic between the personal and the political, the public and the private, and the costs and causes of radical belief."" — New York TimesA triumph of the imagination and a masterpiece of modern storytelling, Cloudsplitter is narrated by the enigmatic Owen Brown, last surviving son of America's most famous and still controversial ...

“The most dramatic account so far of the extraordinary expeience of slaves in and after the American Revolution. . . . Schama’s gift for plunging us into the very center of the action makes reading an exhilarating and often moving experience.”—Daily TelegraphIf you were black in America at the start of the Revolutionary War, whom would you want to win? In response to a declaration by the last governor of Virginia that any rebel-owned slave who escaped and served th...

Pagans explores the rise of Christianity from a surprising and unique viewpoint: that of the people who witnessed their ways of life destroyed by what seemed then a powerful religious cult. These "pagans" were actually pious Greeks, Romans, Syrians, and Gauls who observed the traditions of their ancestors. To these devout polytheists, Christians who worshiped only one deity were immoral atheists who believed that a splash of water on the deathbed could erase a lifetime of sin....