by Hunt Janin and Nicole Sheehan.
Hardback (6.4×9.5 inches). 211 pages. 2026.
Despite the bibliography, I have suspicions that this broad-based survey of US privateering was slapped together out of internet parts.
For example: During the American Revolution, Americans crewed 600 privateers (p. xxi). Or is it 800 American privateers (p53)? Or is it 1,197 American privateer ships (p61)? Or is it that the Continental Congress commissioned more than 2,000 privateer ships (p157)? I gave up after page 157.
I found other numerical contradictions — the kind, I suspect, that came from multiple AI searches. If the numbers had been close, welllll, maybe, but with so great a difference, I have no confidence in any of the numbers presented in the book.
The book’s too repetitious with too many anomalies. I have a hard time believing any editor even looked at the text.
— Reviewed by Russ Lockwood
