By combining stunning cartography with engaging and authoritative text, The World Atlas of Pirates presents the story of piracy in a completely new way. Eighty maps plot the routes that pirates followed―whether crossing the world's great oceans or pursuing their prey through creeks and bays. Colorful archive illustrations, including photographs and images from England's National Maritime Museum and other historic collections, bring the villains, their ships, and their victims to life. Lively, accessible text by pirate expert Angus Konstam explains how piracy grew and flourished from the early buccaneers to the rogues of popular legends, how it has been snuffed out, and how it has reared its head again with the machine-gun-toting pirates operating on today's high seas. People have been reading about pirates for almost as long as there have been pirates, and in so doing, they have been transported into a world very different from their own, set amid an exotic backdrop of palm-fringed beaches and warm tropical seas. The World Atlas of Pirates takes a whole new look at the story of piracy. Combining stunning cartography with engaging and authoritative text, it cuts away at the myths to reveal the world of “real” pirates―whose stories, while every bit as colorful and compelling as those of their counterparts from legends and Hollywood, may not be quite so romantic. Follow along with author and pirate authority Angus Konstam as he explores the journeys of wealth and fortune, as well as murder and betrayal, taken by pirates through the ages―from the Aegean Sea during the ancient Greek era and the Caribbean of the mid-seventeenth century, to the Red Sea of the twenty-first century, where Somali pirates prey on passing supertankers and container ships. More than seventy historic and newly created maps plot the routes that pirates followed―whether crossing the world's great oceans or pursuing their prey through creeks and bays. Colorful archive illustrations, including photographs and images from England's National Maritime Museum and other historic collections, bring the villains, their ships, and their victims to life. Konstam's lively, accessible text explains how piracy grew and flourished from the early buccaneers to the rogues of popular legends, how it has been snuffed out, and how it has reared its head again with the machine-gun-toting pirates operating on today's high seas. It's an age-old phenomenon. It hasn't gone away. It isn't pretty. In this lavishly illustrated book, an expert tells the fascinating story of piracy, from its beginnings to the present day―in a completely new way. Angus Konstam is a prolific author, with over 50 historical titles in print. His piratical titles include The History of Pirates (Lyons Press), Pirates! and Pirates , 1680-1730 and The Pirate Ship . Other publications include History of Shipwrecks, A Historical Atlas of Exploration , and The Spanish Galleon . He studied history and archaeology at the Scottish Universities of Aberdeen and St. Andrews, and is also a former naval officer, an underwater archaeologist and a museum curator. He has advised the archaeologists who excavated Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge , and has made several TV appearances as a piratical "talking head" for the History Channel. He is also the author of Blackbeard: America's Most Notorious Pirate . The author lives in Edinburgh, UK. FROM THE INTRODUCTION The aim of this book is to set the record straight—to expose the romantic myths about pirates that have existed for centuries. In fact, piracy was a brutal business, far removed from the rose-tinted world of Captain Jack Sparrow. The unvarnished truth is that piracy is a crime. . . . If that doesn’t sound particularly exotic or romantic, it shouldn’t. Piracy has been known to encompass assault, murder, kidnapping, and torture, none of which sit comfortably with the popular view of piracy. . . . I decided I had to try and cut away the myth from the reality. . . . The truth about pirates was very hard to find, buried deep in dusty court records, newspapers, letters, and reports. What emerged was a very different kind of pirate from those we had become accustomed to. Used Book in Good Condition