Bold in Her Breeches: 

Women Pirates Across the Ages

 

 

By Jo Stanely -

 

Anyone setting out to publish a book on pirates has to bridge the difficult ground between good scholarship and popular public perception, and a book on women pirates has to span and even bigger gap between legend and documented reality. Jo Stanley takes a new approach to this, which is more successful than many.

This is partly because of her bright and breezy writing style. While headings such as "A cool look at a hot topic" seem startling at first, and the feminist message is somewhat pro forma, the main thrust is surprisingly beguiling, mostly because the reader is so irresistibly tugged into the slipstream of Stanley's energy and enthusiasm.