In Black Flags, Blue Waters, Eric Jay Dolin presents the surprising and enthralling Age of Pirates that was more bloody than golden. In the process, he proves again that skillfully presented narrative nonfiction is even more gripping than swashbuckling mythology. If you’ve never read Dolin before, prepare to have a new favorite historian. —Jeff Guinn, author of Manson and The Road to Jonestown
This is a masterly and vivid account of the pirates who operated around America’s coasts in the late 1600s and early 1700’s. Using an impressive array of sources Eric Jay Dolin throws a fresh light on familiar stories, unearths some new and surprising facts, and skillfully sets the exploits of a notorious generation of pirates in their historical context. —David Cordingly, author of Under the Black Flag
Eric Jay Dolin is the author of Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, which was chosen as one of the best nonfiction books of 2007 by the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and Providence Journal, and also won the 2007 John Lyman Award for U.S. Maritime History; and Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America, which was chosen by the Seattle Times as one of the best nonfiction books of 2010, and also won the James P. Hanlan Book Award, given by the New England Historical Association. He is also the author of When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail, which was chosen by Kirkus Reviews as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of 2012; and Brilliant Beacons: A History of the American Lighthouse, which was chosen by Captain and Classic Boat as one of the best nautical books of 2016.
Certain books were “banned in Boston” at least as far back as 1651, when one William Pynchon wrote a book criticizing Puritanism.