UK edition of Republic of Pirates on sale tomorrow

I'm pleased to announce that the United Kingdom and Commonwealth edition 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, goes on sale tomorrow.

The new edition -- which includes an exclusive Afterword with some new material -- is published by Pan Macmillan and is also available in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and such pirate haunts as the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Barbados. (The US and Canada edition, first published in 2007, is from Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt.)

Republic of Pirates is the inspiration for Neil "Luther" Cross's new NBC series, Crossbones, starring John Malkovich. It also helped inspire the new Ubisoft video game Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and, based on the previews, probably shaped the thinking of the maker's of Starz' forthcoming series "Black Sails" as well.

For those new to the book, here's an interview I did with National Public Radio's Weekend Edition a few years back, plus a fun VICE Media mini documentary series filmed last summer ahead of AC4's release.

So check out the book -- and the incredible historical events -- that inspired this latest wave of pirate pop culture. You won't be disappointed!

Australia: death threats for climate researchers

My latest story in The Chronicle of Higher Education is on a disturbing development in Australia, where climate scientists have been subjected to threats of violence and death against themselves and their families. Authorities there consider the threats viable enough to have relocated some researchers to secure buildings and cutting them off from unmediated contact with the public, students, and the press.

Fortunately the environment here in the U.S. has yet to turn so authoritarian and hostile to inconvenient data, as the article describes. The piece - which posted Friday - is online, but if you don't subscribe to the Chronicle, you'll be prompted to do so. [Update: 6/21/2011: It's now freely available.]

I've been a foreign correspondent of the Chronicle for twenty-one years now. My last piece for the paper was on alleged discrimination in Canada against graduates of that country's own doctoral programs.