The Penguin Book of Pirates

Real-life accounts of the world’s most notorious pirates--both men and women, from the Golden Age of Piracy and beyond--compiled by the New York Times bestselling author of A True Account: Hannah Masury’s Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates, Written by Herself

A Penguin Classic

Spanning three centuries and eight thousand nautical miles, and compiled by a direct descendant of a sailor who waged war with pirates in the early nineteenth century, The Penguin Book of Pirates takes us behind the eye patches, the peg legs, and the skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger and into the no-man’s-land of piracy that is rife with paradoxes and plot twists. Here, in a fascinating array of accounts that include trial transcripts, journalism, ship logs, and more, are the grit and patois of real maritime marauders like the infamous Blackbeard; the pirates who inspired Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, Stede Bonnet in Max’s Our Flag Means Death, and the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride; the astoundingly egalitarian multi-ethnic and multilingual crews that became enmeshed in historical horrors like the slave trade; and lesser-known but no less formidable women pirates, many of whom disguised themselves as men. By turns brutal, harrowing, and inspiring, these accounts of the ＂radically free＂ sailors who were citizens more of the oceangoing world than of any nation on land remind us of the glories and dangers of the open seas and the seductive appeal of communities forged in resistance.

Katherine Howe (editor) is a bestselling historian and novelist and the direct descendant of a nineteenth-century sailor who battled pirates on the high seas as well as three women who were tried for witchcraft in Salem. She is the editor of The Penguin Book of Witches;the author of the novel A True Account: Hannah Masury’s Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates, Written by Herself, the New York Times bestselling novels The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane and The House of Velvet and Glass, and the young adult novels Conversion and The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen; and the coauthor with Anderson Cooper of the #1 New York Times bestseller Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty. Born and raised in Houston, she has taught at Boston University and Cornell, and lives with her family in New England. She is an amateur sailor.