While history has painted most pirates as abominable brutes, capable of the worst cruelties and driven by insatiable greed, the author of this study insists that pirates have gotten a lot of bad press, mainly by popularizing writers who were trying to sell books. He notes, for example, that Henry Morgan always carried privateering commissions signed by the Governor of Jamaica, and that many pirates bought commissions and pardons from one or other of the governors of the American colonies. With this in mind, Mr. Pringle tries to separate fact from fiction in chronicling the activities of the infamous men and women who sailed under the black flag during the great age of piracy. Starting with Sir Francis Drake, the "Father of Modern Piracy, " he examines the lives and deeds of such criminals as Morgan, Kidd, Blackbeard, and Mary Read, as well as lesser-known scoundrels, finding, for the most part, that the myths about these maritime marauders are largely overblown.