The Pirates Laffite
The Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf

What I learned from this book is that most academics make horrible authors and that this was painful to read. Beyond that unless you have a fetish for the Laffites, wanting to read about customs and revenue officers or just have a general interest in the history of the us gulf in the early 1800s, th......more

Davis should be applauded for the superb research and at times overwhelming attention to detail. It is as if he had to discuss every little thing Pierre and Jean Laffite ever did. Trouble is, the forest is lost for the trees, as the book lacks analysis and fails to properly explain the context of th......more

It took me three years to read this book. This was not a series of attempts, starting over again and again, having forgotten what I read before, but a single attempt, in which I laid the book down for months at a time and, taking it up again, resumed where I had left off. This book was extraordinaril......more

If nothing else, it's a great reference book, and the final chapters were then a pretty good read. I have something against any book, article, or visual entertainment that allows a visible monotony. This one did in the pre-Battle of New Orleans chapters, when the brothers Pierre and Jean were mostly......more

Probably not Davis’ best work, but interesting story of pirate activity around New Orleans and the Caribbean in the early 1800s. The book could have used more illustrations and diagrams of various types of ships.......more