Honour Among Thieves: Captain Kidd, Henry Every, and the Story of Pirate Island

Raiders from Saint Mary's Island "do not fit into any of the pirate stereotypes that fiction and films have conditioned us to expect. They were neither foul fiends, noble heroes, nor cackling madmen. On the surface, they were like most other men living at the time. They were ordinary men--but they did extraordinary things. Sea rovers have come to be stereotyped as either heartless fiends or drooling idiots. But their history is much more interesting than a record of deviants. Pirates were normal men. They achieved ambitious and extraordinary goals by exceeding the normal limits men usually impose on themselves"--The back cover.