A Fun, Insightful Look at the Rise and Fall of Caribbean Pirates

Angus Konstam’s drama-filled ‘Pirate Menace’ presents the great pirate captains, how they dominated the Caribbean, and what it took to end their Golden Age. For all their reckless violence, immoral behavior, and suffering they caused on the high seas, pirates, specifically the 18th-century pirates who sailed along the Caribbean, have long been painted with a mythic brush. From the classic literature of Robert Louis Stevenson to Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean,” flamboyance seems to define the age of pirates. It is true that flamboyance was part of the piratical character,...