The Republic of Pirates

In the early eighteenth century a number of the great pirate captains, including Edward 'Blackbeard' Teach and 'Black Sam' Bellamy, joined forces. This infamous 'Flying Gang' was more than simply a thieving band of brothers. Many of its members had come to piracy as a revolt against conditions in the merchant fleet and in the cities and plantations in the Old and New Worlds. Inspired by notions of self-government, they established a crude but distinctive form of democracy in the Bahamas, carving out their own zone of freedom in which indentured servants were released and leaders chosen or deposed by a vote. They were ultimately overcome by their archnemesis, Captain Woodes Rogers - a merchant fleet owner and former privateer - and the brief but glorious Republic of Pirates came to an end. Colin Woodard's account is vividly told, full of incident and adventure, and brings to life this virtually unexplored chapter in the Golden Age of Piracy.

Colin Woodard, an award-winning author and journalist, is State & National Affairs Writer for The Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram, and a longtime correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor and The Chronicle of Higher Education. His work has appeared in The Economist, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Smithsonian, Newsweek/The Daily Beast, Bloomberg View, Washington Monthly and dozens of other national and international publications. A native of Maine, he has reported from more than fifty foreign countries and six continents, and lived for more than four years in Eastern Europe during and after the collapse of communism. His investigative reporting for the Telegram won a 2012 George Polk Award. His most recent book, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, was named a Best Book of 2011 by the editors of The New Republic and the Globalist and won the 2012 Maine Literary Award for Non-Fiction. The Republic of Pirates, a definitive biography of Blackbeard, Sam Bellamy, and other members of the most famous pirate gang in history, is the basis of the forthcoming NBC drama Crossbones. He is also the author of the New England bestseller The Lobster Coast, a cultural and environmental history of coastal Maine; Ocean's End: Travels Through Endangered Seas, a narrative non-fiction account of the deterioration of the world's oceans.