"A General History of the Pyrates" is an excellent resource for anybody who's interested in the lives and exploits of the most famous crews who roamed the high seas during the golden age of piracy.
I only wish the author had made it clear which parts of the book are fiction and which parts are fact.

This book is a must-read for anyone fascinated by the lives and legends of pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy. Be warned, though—it’s not a light read. The prose is straight from the 1700s, so it took me a good 50 to 100 pages to adjust to the style. The footnotes by Manuel Schonhorn are essential, and I recommend keeping Google handy, as you’ll need to look up quite a few archaic terms. For example, Defoe uses "betwixt" instead of "between" and "gaol" for "jail." The detailed accounts of various pirates are captivating, though it can be challenging to separate fact from fiction. For instance, the stories about Anne Bonny in the first volume are widely regarded as embellished. All in all, this is a must-read for anyone wanting an in-depth look at the legendary figures who defined the era of piracy.

Old-timey book, but I knew that. I needed it for an assignment I was writing for my exams, and it did just the trick. While it does have fanciful stories they mostly seem to be true, seeing as all other sources either agree or have no proof.

A good book for studying pirates, and a great book if you want to get obsessed with the history of female pirates, as they are ludicrously badass, like something out of a movie.

Three stars, because while it is very informative, the language is very old and sometimes it's difficult to know what is being said, so lots of interpreting and googling needed if your pirate knowledge isn't savvy

I enjoyed it. It was cool learning about swashbuckling rogues and their crews. I think my favorite part was when Blackbeard refused to die. The book claims he was shot five times and took twenty sword wounds. It was cool because I recognized names and places from Assassin’s Creed. I’d be like, “I don’t like you” because he betrayed my pirate alliance.

This book is an early example of tabloid journalism combining lurid details with moralizing on the evil of their subjects. Many of the crimes the pirates are accused of seem to be sensationalized to sell books because Blackbeard never killed anyone and Captain Kidd was the fall guy for corrupt politicians. I picked this book up because it was a source of information for many of the pirate books I read as a kid. Calling pirates villains seems to be too harsh if you understand how their so called victims engaged in the triangular trade of slaves, sugar, and rum and the Spanish brutally plundered their colonized peoples. Many of the pirates were criminal sea predators but they did not use so called lawful methods to rob people like merchants and kings.

This was such an interesting listen!!! After having watched shows about pirates, it was great to read about the real figures, to listen to the facts, but to also wonder of the reality of the things, because obviously this story is not being told by pirates; and then for me it was also super interesting to read about how Portugal was perceived by the people of the time
Definitely if you're currently obsessed with pirates, this is a great and interesting read (and obviously very much a project of its own time)!!!

Lives of the pirates, with a lot of meandering asides for geography and cultures, but it's Defoe, so what did I expect?

i listened to the audiobook on youtube because the reviews said it's too boring to read yourself. maybe it's my current fascination with pirates, but i found the book interesting. but then again, i've spent hours reading famous pirates' wikipedia pages and found them interesting too.

Non ci si deve aspettare un romanzo con una storia, molto interessante come documento memoria di un'epoca e di un periodo frizzante dove pirati e corsari imperversavano negli oceani e nei mari

It’s not a bad book but it’s incredibly dry. Additionally there was no information here that I didn’t always hear on The Pirate History Podcast. I’ll go 3.3 stars

This book is the origin of many of the pirate stories that inspired later famous fiction (such as Treasure Island). Some of it is undoubtedly factual, especially with regards to the laws and trials of pirates. However, some of the stories are surely embellished (whether by the author, or the pirates themselves when they told their tales to others).

It does not glamorize the pirates, with tales of their brutality and, in specific, how many of them were hanged by the Crown. The action sprawls over the Atlantic Ocean, and even the Indian Ocean, touching on North and South America, Europe, and Africa -- though most of the action does seem to be around the Caribbean islands. Interesting tales from early American history, in which local officials sometimes were in cahoots with the pirates (as those officials got a cut), and what it took to run the pirates down.

Interesting nonfiction(ish) book, and good audiobook recording. For the record, it was not published under Defoe's name, and there still are disputes as to whether he wrote it, collaborated on it, or someone associated with him in publishing wrote it. It does come across in the journalistic style Defoe is known for, and there is a wry, dry wit in many passages that put Defoe to mind.

Entertaining