More a two-line comment: I found it hard to take The Pirate Queen: Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire seriously when I realized that the author and/or the copyeditor had decided that the singular of cimarrones was cimarrone, that the Spanish word for god is díos, and that proper antecedents and use of the comma are for the weak. If you can't get the basic spell-checking right, what does that imply about your fact-checking?
To give the book its due, however, it does quote Sir Francis Drake's description of his mariners: They "rejoiced in things stark naughty." That alone is almost worth the purchase price.
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6 comments:
*blinks*
wait, wait. that's a real book? From the title I thought it was a joke at first! (Uh, perhaps that's because I read it initially as "The Pirate Queen: Elizabeth I and Her Pirate Adventures...")
Which would, in fact, be an entirely thrilling read if it were done right. Serial! You have your mission!
But no, it's real. And unfortunately disappointing; there's more lazy writing than I'm prepared to tolerate. It does give you a sense of the chaos and financial problems that Elizabeth was handling, as well as some perspective on how her navy and independent mariners worked, but the author doesn't give the queen enough credit for intentionally exploiting that chaos and uncertainty, IMO.
Right now I'm reading a book about Marco Polo, and it's thrilling. It makes Europe during the Middle Ages sound like an utter backwater, and the text is full of little bits of fascinating information, like that the word "ciao" comes from the Venetian expression "sciao vostro" ("your slave"), with the word sciao or sciavo coming from Croatian. Mm, linguistic back-dating.
Oooh, the Marco Polo book sounds *fascinating*.
Linky goodness. It's relevant to a whole host (or horde, perhaps) of geeky interests, including information processing, organizational structure, monetary policy, trade and economics, and of course linguistics. Plus it's got a strong narrative and encourages you to find out more. I am not impartial here.
Well, my geek cred is definitely intact, because your description sold me.
This just in: a fascinating description of sericulture is also included. I cannot quite place why I find this book so delicious, but it certainly piques my interest in a wide range of topics without losing track of Polo's travels.
Also, the author amuses himself with speculating which groups of women Polo thought were hottest and whether he slept with any of them. It's not really enlightening, since there's no real evidence, but it helps humanize a historical figure.
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