Books by Angus Konstam
Blackbeard: The Biography
A rollicking and thoroughly researched biography of the infamous pirate.
While the so-called ‘Golden Age of Piracy’ spawned a rash of notorious cutthroats such as Henry Every, ‘Calico’ Jack Rackham and ‘Black’ Bartholomew Roberts, it was Blackbeard who caught the public imagination, and who remains the most widely-known of all pirates.
Think of the archetypal pirate, and you’ll almost certainly conjure up an image of Blackbeard (“that large quantity of hair, which, like a frightful meteor covered his whole face, and frightened America more than any comet that has ever appeared there”). Moreover, he and his crew virtually brought the trade of the American colonies to a standstill, and had the audacity to blockade one of the richest ports on the American Atlantic seaboard. It is small wonder that he became one of the most feared pirates of his age; as well as the most notorious.
His physical appearance and ruthless nature made him appear larger than life, and within years of his gory death he became the stuff of legend. Not surprising then that few have managed to strip away the myth from the reality. This biography will expose the real man behind the piratical façade.
With the second ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ film in production, the world of publishing is proving slow to tap into people’s life long fascination with pirates. Until now?
World Rights: Wiley & Sons
Publication Date: July 2006
Sovereigns of the Sea: The Quest to Build the Perfect Renaissance Battleship
The story of the first modern naval arms race—the seventeenth-century quest to build the greatest warship.
This book charts the dramatic course of the European battle for maritime supremacy, from the first marriage of guns and ships in the mid-fifteenth-century to the grandiose national flagships two hundred years later that led to a new breed of battleship—the ship-of-the-line. It tells the tale of the ships themselves and the story of shipbuilding, politics, and technological innovation during a crucial period of world history.
World Rights: Wiley & Sons
Publication Date: July 08