The Pirate Coast

Book #43 of 2005 was The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805 by the wonderful offbeat history writer Richard Zacks.

Pa-Pa-Pa-Pirate Coast tells the story of William Eaton, a man chosen by Thomas Jefferson to lead a covert mission to incite a civil war in Tripoli and attempt an overthrow of the Bashaw Yussef Karamanli, a man holding nearly 300 U.S. sailors as slaves. There are lots of politics in play between the various parties (especially between Eaton and Jefferson) which really adds an extra dimension to the story . One of the beauties of the book is the way Zacks explains each man's motivations and perspective as events are unfolding. By understanding the complexities you get a much better idea of the full picture of what happened during the mission and where it succeded and failed.

Before I read this book I had never heard much of anything about William Eaton or the U.S. battles with Tripoli. Did you know that in 1801 Tripoli became the first country to declare war on the United States? The war also inspired the famous 'from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli' line found in the Marines' Hymn. Not knowing anything about the history of the events actually made the book all the more interesting as it ended up reading a lot like a great fiction book where I wanted to read more to find out what would happen next.

I'd definitely recommend The Pirate Coast, though if you haven't read any of Zacks' previous works I'd start with The Pirate Hunter first. Both are excellent, but I'd have to give a sleight nod to The Pirate Hunter as it's just a wonderful wonderful book and would be tough to beat. An Underground Education is also a fun read but it's more of an encyclopedia of interesting facts than a book you read from front-to-back.

You can read an excerpt from the The Pirate Coast here.

The official site for the book can be found here.

For a more detailed review I'd recommend checking out Blogcritics.