Product Description

A literary treasure, The Pirate Hunter is a masterpiece of historical detective work, and a rare, authentic pirate story for grown-ups.

Captain Kidd has gone down in history as America's most ruthless buccaneer, fabulously rich, burying dozens of treasure chests up and down the eastern seaboard. But it turns out that most everyone, even many respected scholars, have the story all wrong. Captain William Kidd was no career cut-throat; he was a tough, successful New York sea captain who was hired to chase pirates. His three-year odyssey aboard the aptly named Adventure galley pitted him against arrogant Royal Navy commanders, jealous East India Company captains, storms, starvation, angry natives, and, above all, flesh-and-blood pirates. Superbly written and impeccably researched, The Pirate Hunter is one ripping good yarn.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #208843 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-18
• Released on: 2003-06-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Entertaining, richly detailed and authoritatively narrated, Zacks's account of the life of legendary seaman William Kidd delivers a first-rate story. Though Kidd, better known as Captain Kidd, was inextricably bound with piracy and has popularly gone down as a marauding buccaneer himself, Zacks (An Underground Education) argues that he was actually a mercenary backed by the English government and several New World investors to track down pirates and reclaim their stolen wares. The book is cogent and replete with supporting evidence without the heavy-handed feel of some scholarly work. What really sets the book apart is Zacks's gift as researcher and storyteller. He highlights the role of an undeniable pirate, Robert Culliford, in Kidd's tale and pits the two men against each other from the outset, constructing his book as an intriguing duel. Aside from the tightly constructed plot, Zacks also wonderfully evokes the social and political life of the 17th century at land and at sea, and he takes turns at debunking and validating pirate folklore: while it appears the dead giveaway of a skull and crossbones made it a rare flag choice, Zacks contends that pirates did often wear extravagant clothing and were as drunk, cursing, hungry, horny... and violent as myth would have them. Augmented by such details and driven by a conflict between Kidd and Culliford that keeps the pages flying, Zacks's book is a treasure, indeed.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
William Kidd is remembered as one of history's greatest pirates, and thousands of people have searched in vain for the treasure he supposedly left buried on a desert island. In this fascinating work of historical revisionism, Zacks argues that in fact Kidd was a privateer, commissioned by the British Crown to hunt down pirates. But his mutinous crew was dissatisfied with the slim pickings of buccaneer-hunting, and Kidd himself inadvertently fell afoul of the powerful East India Company, which tarred him as a criminal. Instead of being acclaimed a national hero, he died on the gallows, in 1701. Zacks's detective work here is thoroughly convincing. In addition, he sets the suspenseful tale of Kidd's downfall within its larger historical context, in a manner reminiscent, at times, of Defoe, vividly illustrating the brutalities of life on a seagoing vessel and the chaos of urban society at the end of the seventeenth century.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

From AudioFile
Zacks takes the thrilling historical figure of Captain Kidd and makes his story even more dazzling by presenting the realities of buccaneer life, warts and all. Michael Prichard's expert delivery enhances these details, as does his spirited delivery of a pirate ditty. It's interesting to learn that Kidd was not the cutthroat he is often portrayed to be but rather a kind of bounty hunter. Zacks has a knack for presenting information that is fascinating--whether or not you're interested in pirate lore. Prichard maintains a sense of irony as the story moves to its conclusion. This is a perfect choice for anyone who enjoys armchair adventure. S.G.B. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

Overwritten pseudo-history
Overwritten pseudo-history that purports to prove that Caption Kidd was a privateer with royal and business-leader credentials and not a rogue pirate.

Zacks buries sections of what might have been a decent 250-page book in 410 pages full of unprovable assertions and God-like first-person statements, which calls into question all of his supposed historical statements.

The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd
The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd is a great book! There is a "pirate boat" named the Capt Kidd nearby where I live... I love to go on sunset sails dressed in my piratical garb! Too much fun!

Book Good, beware book on tape
I was listening (while commuting) to the book-on-tape of Pirate
Hunter, by Zacks. Good, informative and entertaining - I generally agree with the many positive reviews so will not repeat here.
But the reader, when quoting letters and other source documents,
seems to oddly mispronounce period terms.
Especially, renfaire and quaint-resort-community convention aside,
the character that looks something like the Y in "Ye" is a standard
printing and handwriting character called the Thorn, standing in
for "Th" so "Ye olde shope" should be pronounced "The olde shope".
Since the word "the" is used a lot, ye abuse most foul grated
painfully upon ye ear.
(If I may be so bold, Zacks is not totally off the hook for this one: transcriptions should not use the 'y' character for the thorn. either they should use "th" or the thorn (which may also look like a p with a flag - it's not like modern word processors or printers can't handle it). There is enough real quaintness and incomprehension when we deal with the 17th C. without adding a completely bogus layer)
And other examples; but mostly I just did not like the reading overall. So, I recommend the book if not the tape/cd
version.
-Rick