Talking pirates with Press Herald Live, May 13, 7pm

For subscribers of the Portland Press Herald: I'll be talking with colleague Katherine Lee about the real pirates of the Caribbean, what it was like to write and research Republic of Pirates, and the experience of being an on-camera expert for Netflix's recent hit docudrama series "Lost Pirate Kingdom." Should be fun and I'll be answering audience questions as well.

The pandemic is still on so this is a virtual event. Good news is you don't have to travel, but you do need to subscribe. But, hey, if you do it's free and you get to support local journalism here in Maine. 

It all kicks off online this Thursday, May 13 at 7pm. Registration details here.

What Netflix's "Lost Pirate Kingdom" Got Right (and wrong) About the Golden Age Pirates

I greatly enjoyed being an on-camera expert for Netflix's hit docudrama series "Lost Pirate Kingdom," which essentially tells the story of the Golden Age pirate gang related in my 2007 work of history, The Republic of Pirates.

But how accurate was the six-part series, which has reignited interest in Blackbeard and his peers in the Flying Gang?

I wrote up my thoughts on that over at Talking Points Memo. Hope you enjoy it and the series.

Talking pirates on a forthcoming Netflix series

A few months before the pandemic struck I travelled to a Manhattan studio to film an hours-long interview with a British production company working on a documentary-drama on the Bahamas-based pirate gang who are the subject of one of works of history, The Republic of Pirates.

I'm pleased to see that that series, for Netflix, is being released March 15th and is entitled "Lost Pirate Kingdom." Based on the trailer it should be a hoot.

If you find yourself hankering for more of Blackbeard and his gang's story, do consider checking out the book. And either way enjoy the show.

[Update, 3/15/21: Episode 1 out now.]

Talking pirates with Discovery's "Expedition Unknown" (before the pandemic)

At the end of August, long before the new coronavirus infected its first human, I was in Paris talking with Josh Gates, host of Discovery Channel's "Expedition Unknown" about the pirate Olivier La Bous and the legend of his treasure. Our interview was filmed at the city's Museum of Freemasonry, which is also the center of the order in France, with numerous temples in the basement.

The episode -- "The Fortune of the Buzzard" (S8:E6) -- premiered here in the US on March 11th, re--aired Sunday, and is available for streaming via your cable provider if you follow this link. Hope it brings some lighthearted respite to your family's bunker.

Was great fun hanging out with Gates -- who has very much the same personality when the cameras

aren't rolling as when the are -- and to share the story of one of the subjects of my history of the great Caribbean pirate gang, The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down. A couple caveats from our hours-long shoot that wound up on the proverbial cutting room floor: (a) the legend of the cipher, necklace and the gallows is a great story, but makes absolutely no sense when you think about it and; (b) if La Bous's treasure is out there, I think the environs of his former Madagascar hideout would be the place to look.

For those with an unhealthy interest in pirates like La Bous, I'm also a proponent of the theory that he -- not Sam Bellamy -- came to Machias in 1718 before continuing on to raid ships in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, one I sketched out a few years ago for the Portland Press Herald.

My last pirate-related television production appearance was alongside Hilary Duff, of all people, on a dock in Bath, North Carolina, talking about Blackbeard for TLC's "Who Do You Think You Are?"

Talking the Republic of Pirates in, yes, Nassau, The Bahamas, Feb. 24

My third book, The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down is the most comprehensive, back-to-the-archives account of the most famous pirate outbreak in history, the one that's responsible for virtually all of our pirate pop culture imagery and the inspiration for the pirates of Robert Louis Stevenson and the Walt Disney Company.

That pirate gang was able to become as fearsome as it did because they had a fortified base, a pirate republic if you will, at Nassau in the failed British colony of the Bahamas, which had been sacked and destroyed by the enemy in the War of Spanish Succession. Blackbeard, Sam Bellamy, Calico Jack Rackham, Stede Bonnet, Mary Read, Anne Bonny and many other infamous pirates gathered together there, protected by the repurposed fort, supported by a population of rogues, escaped slaves, and opportunists, and supplied by the unscrupulous merchants of Harbour Island. Its a remarkable tale from start to finish, and the book has inspired an NBC series (Crossbones with John Malkovich and Kate Foy) and Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, which recreated early 18th century Nassau in great detail (and for which I served as a historical consultant.)

So it's with great pleasure to announce that on Monday, February 24, I'll be speaking on the pirates in Nassau at the Pirate Republic Brewery Taproom, located, appropriately enough, on Woodes Rogers Walk on a site that would have been smack in the middle of the old pirate village. It's at 6pm and free and open to the public. Parrots optional.

In France

I've been in France this week. I can't say too much about it, except that it involved a television shoot, the Museum of the Freemasons in Paris, and maybe something about a pirate treasure. More on this in the months to come.

[Update, 3/14/20: That's Josh Gates on my left, host of Discovery Channel's Expedition Unknown, who was preparing to head off to the Indian Ocean to try to find the pirate Olivier La Buse's purported treasure. The show, Season 8, Episode 6 -- "The Fortune of the Buzzard" -- premiered on Mar. 11 and can be found at Amazon Prime, your cable streaming service, and other outlets.]

Along the way, however, I discovered this brilliant contraption in a rural train station in Champagne, which I can share with abandon. Here is a country that takes cultural production seriously.

Also: it's strange to see Notre Dame in darkness, all approaches closed off for a block around, including bridges, plaza, and subway entrances. A catastrophe, that fire was.

On Blackbeard, 300 years after his death, in the New York Times

Republic of Pirates fans take note: 2018 has been the 300th anniversary of Woodes Rogers' landing at Nassau, marking the formal -- if tumultuous and uncertain -- end of the pirate republic, and Thursday was the anniversary of Blackbeard's death in a pitched battle with sailors of the Royal Navy.

I'm thankful that the New York Times opinion editors let me share my thoughts on the significance of this occasion -- and the reasons for Blackbeard's uninterrupted popularity -- in Friday's paper. It's a nice bookend to the tricentennial, a year I started in Bath, North Carolina, talking about the pirate and his death on an iced-in dock with Rogers' unlikely descendent, actress Hilary Duff.  Enjoy the piece.

Also on Thursday back in the U.K, the Bristol Post ran this piece on Blackbeard's real name (it's Edward Thatch, not Teach) based on an interview they conducted with me a few years back. Thatch's family was from the Bristol area, even if the latest evidence -- from researcher Baylus Brooks -- indicates he himself was likely born in Jamaica.

I last wrote on Blackbeard for Smithsonian a few years back, sharing new research by Mike Daniels on his final capture.

What did pirates look like? My Business Insider interview

The folks at Business Insider recently called to talk about what the Golden Age pirates really looked and acted like because, well, why not?

The interview is up over at their website, with a produced video to illustrate the conversation.

They reached out to me on account of my being the author of a detailed history of this pirate gang, The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down, which is available in a bunch of foreign editions - UK, Poland, Spain, Hungary, China, Taiwan, Denmark, and Brazil, if you happen to live in one of those places.

Last week, Business Insider asked a bunch of Wall Street leaders what they recommended for summer reading, yielding a list of 22 books. Thanks to UBS Americas president Tom Naratil for including Republic of Pirates here as well.

Talking pirates with Hilary Duff on TLC's Who Do You Think You Are?

In an unlikely development, I recently returned to Blackbeard's Bath, North Carolina haunt to chat with actress Hilary Duff about one of her ancestors, the man responsible for the pirate's death 300 years ago this fall.

Duff was being whisked around the world for what became this week's episode of the cable television program "Who Do You Think You Are?" on TLC.; I was there as author of The Republic of Pirates, which tells the story of how Blackbeard came to be in Bath and how Duff's ancestor organized the expedition to kill him. The segment was shot on an unusually cold January morning -- so cold in fact that Bath Creek had frozen over, making boating impossible, so we spoke on a dock surrounded by

mirror-like ice.

Here's an extended clip of our conversation. The full episode -- S9:E4 -- is available here to US cable subscribers with TLC in their package.

Thanks to the excellent team at Shed Media for an enjoyable mid-winter dive into piracy.

I'll next be talking piracy in Nassau, site of the Bahamian pirate republic, in mid-July, on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the pirates' downfall. Stay tuned for details. My next public talk is at the Chautauqua Institution in far western New York state July 3, on American Character.

Big in Japan: American Nations, now in Japanese

Just as my son's first grade class was embarking on a unit on Japan a couple weeks ago, what should arrive at our front door but a package from Tokyo containing the handsome new Japanese edition of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.

Publishers Iwanami Shoten took particular care in creating their edition, which appears in two hardcover volumes, even asking if I could write an updated, Trump Age introduction for the Japanese audience, which I was delighted to do. Co-translator Yoshio Higomoto and was a pleasure to work with. The book looks to have been published in mid-October, though I missed that at the time.

Funny enough, the only other foreign language edition of American Nations is Geulhangari Publishers' Korean edition, and a simplified Chinese edition is coming soon. Northeast Asia leads the way....

[Update, 1/26/18: Japan's Asahi Shimbun came to my home to interview me for a feature on the book which appeared this week.]

(Here, for search purposes, is the Japanese title:)

11の国のアメリカ史――分断と相克の400年(上)

Speaking on Blackbeard and the pirates, seacoast Georgia, Aug. 17

For those in and near the Georgia seacoast, I'll be speaking on Blackbeard and the golden age pirates this Thursday, August 17, at the Coastal Georgia Historical Society on St. Simons Island. It's the subject of my third book, The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down.

The event, part of their Chautauqua Lecture Series, kicks off at 6pm at the society's A.W Jones Event Center. The series has a subscription charge, details herein.

Hope to see you there.

On pirates in Maine in the Press Herald and on WCSH-6

By coincidence, I both wrote about and was interviewed about pirates in Maine last week.

Maine's NBC affiliates, WCSH-6 here in Portland and WLBZ-2 in Bangor, were curious about the legendary treasure of Jewell Island in Casco Bay. Captain Kidd is said to have left his mother lode there, so could it be true? No, I told them from a float on said bay, but some of the other pirates I wrote about in Republic of Pirates definitely did visit Casco Bay, so anything's possible, however unlikely. Here's the segment.

Those pirates belonged to Black Sam Bellamy's flotilla -- the vessels that survived a spring storm off Cape Cod in 1717, that is. By coincidence, an exhibit of artifacts and treasures from the wreck of Bellamy's flagship -- which didn't make it -- has opened here in Portland, and I have this story in the Maine Sunday Telegram about the pirates and the controversies surrounding the man who found the Whydah.

For those eager to learn more about Bellamy and the golden age pirates, consider my third book.

Talking pirates with CNN Travel

Earlier this week, I spoke with CNN Travel's London based writer Chris Scott about Henry Avery and the golden age Bahamian pirates, the subject of my third book, The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down.

Scott's piece on the "Real Pirates of the Caribbean" posted yesterday at CNN, and also features interviews with several other pirate researchers.

This year marks the 300th anniversary of the wreck of Sam Bellamy's Whydah, the capture of Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge, and many other key events for the golden age pirates. There's also another one of those silly Disney pirate movies coming out.

For more on Blackbeard, consider this Smithsonian cover story I wrote a couple of years ago on some new discoveries.

DNA study confirms American Nations map

From Nature "Clustering of 770,000 genomes reveal post-colonial population structure of North America."

Last month, the journal Nature published a genetic study on ancestral clustering in North America using the DNA tests of 775,000 Americans, ultimately tied to genealogical information, to reveal the settlement and familial patterns of the continent's settlement.

Yes, you guessed it: the results match my American Nations map -- which is based on post-1492 settlement flows -- to what even I found to be a jaw dropping degree.

Remember: American Nations isn't based on genetics. It argues there are distinct cultural regions - stateless nations even -- that were created by separate initial settlement patterns. While obviously this would leave a genetic trace, one wouldn't necessarily expect it to be super strong, especially in areas that had substantial subsequent immigration or intra-regional migration. The argument is that the underlying values of the initial settlement culture shaped the region, even in the later absence of the people themselves.

But turns out the genetic signature is strong and precise as well. Check out, for instance, how the New England settlement of Yankeedom left a strong genetic trace not just in New England, southwestern New Brunswick, and Upstate New York, but even in Michigan, which was settled in the early and middle 19th century. (That Utah is part of this genetic clustering does not surprise, given the Yankee origins of the Mormon religion and migration, as discussed in the book.) See also - despite the smaller numbers - the Yankee traces in the Left Coast parts of California, Oregon, and Washington.

Notice also the Appalachian streams: yup, they pour right through the lower parts of the "Midwestern" states, as well as the Ozarks and into Oklahoma and the Texas Hill Country, just as American Nations insisted (much to the chagrin of some in the latter regions.)

There's a lot to unpack here, and am hoping to get a chance to do so in more detail moving forward. [Update, 10/14/17: I finally did just that in an extended story for Medium.]

Pacific Standard asks: Can fact-checking defeat (LePage's) demagoguery?

A writer from Pacific Standard Magazine gave a call the other day asking about Governor Paul LePage, who is currently in the midst of the greatest of his long chain of self-inflicted scandals, this one over a chain of racist statements regarding drug dealer arrests, violent and profane threats against a lawmaker who called him out for these, and other sundries. The question at hand: can fact-checking -- by the media, or the ACLU or whomever -- put a demagogue in check?

My answer is probably not, at least in regards to such a person's supporters, and I say this from the experience not only of covering Paul LePage, but also of living and reporting in Viktor Orban's Hungary, Franjo Tudjman's Croatia, and the mess that was (and is) post-war Bosnia. Supporters back such people because they believe them to be on "their side" against a wicked internal enemy ("liberals," Serbs, what-have-you), not because the justifications the demagogue comes up with for their policies actually stand up to scrutiny. That's why they've been so dangerous throughout history: they lead people down a fact-free path of resentment, and in some times and places the more polite sectors of society are temperamentally unable to muster a vigorous enough response to the threat until it's too late.

Fortunately the stakes are relatively low in Maine, where the chief executive doesn't have an army, nuclear arsenal, or security state at his or her disposal. Not true of the Presidency of the United States, though, which is why our European allies -- who have far more firsthand experience with demagogues -- are so concerned about Donald Trump.

This long answer isn't in the article, but you can hear takes from the ACLU, Maine progressive activist Mike Tippng and conservative activist Lance Dutson.

UK discovers Republic of Pirates

The media is a fickle beast, and most especially the British print variety, which suddenly last week decided they needed breaking news about Blackbeard, the infamous pirate who died 298 years ago. Thus, out of the blue, some of the revelations my nine year old biography of Blackbeard and his gang, The Republic of Pirates, have been making headlines there.

It started with the Bristol Post, the daily in the city that may have been Blackbeard's port of birth. Someone there discovered the two-year old U.K edition of the book and, therein, that Blackbeard's real name was actually Edward Thatch, rather than Edward Teach as is commonly thought. I had an enjoyable conversation with reporter Tristan Cork, who wrote this piece, "Bristol pirate Blackbeard's real name was NOT Edward Teach, American historian conforms." He includes my full email response to his question on this score, for those wanting the details.

The next day, an editor for SWNS.com, a news and PR site out of Bristol contacted me on behalf of the Daily Mail, which apparently outsources to them the troublesome task of actually reporting their stories. I had a thoughtful interview with one of their reporters about Blackbeard, which informed this Daily Mail story on Thursday. The Mail managed to get my name wrong and the erroneously state that I'm based in New York and the byline for the story is of someone I never spoke to. They go on to, ironically enough, report how "the guidebooks, plaques, posters, and history books have been getting [Blackbeard's] name wrong all this time." Fancy that.

But they do say I'm the "leading authority and writer on the golden age of piracy" and give some nice plugs for the book, so I'm not complaining. After all, "it's absolutely true because I read it in the Daily Mail."

The Sun, not to be left out, ran this story Friday which, umm, "borrows" all of its reporting from the Daily Mail story. The tabloid -- Britain's largest circulation paper -- is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

In any case, I'm pleased the pirates' story is getting attention in the country where many of them were born, and glad that my newspaper career has largely centered on this side of the Atlantic.

Reviewing "Prisoners of Geography" at the Washington Post

Tim Marshall, veteran foreign correspondent for Britain's SkyNews, has a new book out on geopolitics. Prisoners of Geography argues the influence of geographic elements is under recognized in our contemporary foreign policy and historical discourse and aims to fix that.

He does so with mixed success, as I argue in my review in yesterday's Washington Post. Marshall is strong on Russia, weak on North America and the Pacific, and doesn't really make a case for a new (or even renewed) way of analyzing world events.

My last review for the Post was on Brand Luther, a new book on Martin Luther's game-changing effect on the greatest social media innovation of his time: the printed book.

How Martin Luther reinvented the book

Martin Luther didn't just spark the Reformation, he invented the modern book and the publishing industry. That's the intriguing story told on this, the eve of the 500th anniversary of his 95 theses, in Andrew Pettegree's new book Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe, and Started the Protestant Reformation. 

I reviewed the book for tomorrow's Washington Post. Here's a taste:

When Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door in the Saxon backwater town of Wittenberg, moveable type was something like the computer in the 1960s, a useful and expensive tool used by academics and elite institutions....Luther realized the untapped potential of print as a mass medium and used it to broadcast his message to lay readers across the German states, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers via this new social media. 

My most recent review for the Post was of Tom Gjelten's Nation of Nations in October.

At Washington Post, 2 year old American Nations article hits #1 Most Read

Remember that time in late 2013 when my then-two year old book, American Nations, suddenly went viral on the Internet? It started with a story I did for Tufts Magazine explaining the profound regional differences in violence, gained steam organically (with the newly colorized map), and then went berserk when the Washington Post's Reid Wilson put up this post at the paper's GovBeat blog. It got millions of hits in the first week, prompting newspaper columns and national radio and television appearances, and pushing the book to #50 of all books sold on Amazon.

Well, that GovBeat post just won't quit. After "trending" for the past two weeks, yesterday the year-and-a-half old post surged to No. 1 on the Post's Most Read list and, as of this morning, is still at No. 3. The paper put this Facebook status update up last night, which generated over 900 shares and nearly 2000 likes in its first three hours alone.

Nutty.

So, for those of you who may have just discovered the American Nations Map and want to know more, read this for a cogent summary or, if you’re really in a hurry, go here.

My next open-to-the-public speaking appearance on the American Nations will be in Ames, Iowa October 6. Stay tuned for details.

Signing books, Whydah Museum in Provincetown, Mass., July 21

If you live on Cape Cod, I'll be meeting readers and signing copies of The Republic of Pirates at the Expedition Whydah Museum in Provincetown this coming Tuesday, July 21, from 4 to 6pm.

The museum was established by Barry Clifford, the explorer who found Sam Bellamy's flagship, the Whydah, and it houses many artifacts found at the wreck site in nearby Wellfleet. Ken Kinkor -- one of the world's most knowledgeable scholars of the Golden Age Pirates -- was the resident researcher there until his untimely death in 2013.

The museum is located on Macmillan Wharf; I'll be at the gift store, so you don't have to buy admission to come by and say hello.

My next pirates-related event is at the scene of the crime -- Nassau, The Bahamas -- in late October.