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The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire | 
 enlarge | Author: Susan Ronald
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $9.19
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Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 342822
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 1.4
ISBN: 0060820675
Dewey Decimal Number: 941
EAN: 9780060820671
ASIN: 0060820675
Publication Date: June 24, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | Hardcover - The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire | | • | Hardcover - Pirate Queen: Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventures and the Dawn of Empire | | • | Audio CD - The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire | | • | Audio Download - The Pirate Queen (Unabridged) | | • | MP3 CD - The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire | | • | Unknown Binding - The Pirate Queen | | • | Kindle Edition - Pirate Queen, The | | • | Audio CD - The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire |
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Product Description
Extravagant, whimsical, and hot-tempered, Elizabeth was the epitome of power, both feared and admired by her enemies. Dubbed the "pirate queen" by the Vatican and Spain's Philip II, she employed a network of daring merchants, brazen adventurers, astronomer philosophers, and her stalwart Privy Council to anchor her throne—and in doing so, planted the seedlings of an empire that would ultimately cover two-fifths of the world. In The Pirate Queen, historian Susan Ronald offers a fresh look at Elizabeth I, relying on a wealth of historical sources and thousands of the queen's personal letters to tell the thrilling story of a visionary monarch and the swashbuckling mariners who terrorized the seas to amass great wealth for themselves and the Crown.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Too Many Lists Make for a Listless Read March 13, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The essence of any writing goes back to the basics: who, what, where, when, and why. Ronald does well on all but the most important: how. There is a "story" in "history." George Santayana said: "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." It is the story of how something was done--or not--that can give us the perspective to make different choices when faced with similar challenges.
By cleaving to the academic viewpoint of chronicling all the who, what, and when, we are presented with everything we need to regurgitate on an exam to prove that we studied, but Ronald hasn't made us wiser. Every time the story is about to pick up, Ronald halts it abruptly with an inventory of booty, or a list of persons involved with a given enterprise. This book is like driving with one foot firmly pressed on the accelerator pedal while the other foot just as firmly presses the brakes.
The book ends, appropriately for the author, with John Dee's list of 13 criteria for creating the "Petty Navy Royal" and a list of "typical treasure" carried by the flota back to Spain. Ronald undoubtedly knows the subject matter.
Historians such as Joseph Ellis and David McCullough have raised the bar by bringing history to life. By being part of the experience, we learn much more both about history and ourselves. In this way, studying history makes us better people. It was McCullough who said: "No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read." Wanting to read history is the first step in the journey; a lesson Ronald should take note of.
 Solid, well focused book on E1's naval operations January 23, 2008
I agree with one of the other reviewers that the writing style is kind of amateurish and that the writer frequently re-crosses the same ground. However, I liked how the author followed Elizabeth's difficult and dangerous task of navigating her weak nation through treacherous times with the help of her pirates. I found her habit of constantly translating the value of everything into modern day values (dollars and pounds sterling)irritating. Also think that readers looking for alot on sea battles or naval nuances will be disappointed. Not a bad book but not a great one either.
Brings it All Together January 20, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I don't know all the literature on this era, but I expect that Ronald's achievement is not in unearthing new information, but in putting it all together. The general works on Elizabeth and this period present pirates and piracy in piecemeal fashion and Elizabeth's benefits as serendipitous. This book shows that piracy was wed into her foreign policy as much or more than her marriage possibilities, which garner considerably more attention in books for the general reader and in film.
The author brings together the internal and external politics of England, the economy, the religious issues, the excitement of discovery, the role of court favorites, and shows piracy as a thread running through it all. The book has provoked my thinking and given me a whole new yard stick by which to measure this period. While Spain is plundering the new world for gold and Africa for slaves, England is plundering Spain and finding benefit in the slave trade. This explains why English colonists were late (compared to Spain) in arriving in their "demarkated" hemisphere.
It is for the editing and not that writing that I give this book 4 stars and not 5. The frequency of ambiguous phrases and incomplete concepts hinders a smooth read. These are not things a writer, who knows her material inside and out, can easily spot.
For instance, p. 289, allusion is made to the storm raging and "driving the Francis, the Sea Dragon, the White Lion and the Talbot out to sea" meaning Drake could only offer the Roanoke colonists the Bark Bonner. 4 boats seems like a staggering loss, but there is no explanation or follow up. On p. 312, when Drake captures Don Pedro who will not submit to ransom, the author quotes from sailor's testimony from a law suit over Drake's estate 20 years hence. While this suit is beyond the scope of this book, the attribution of the quote, without explanation, suggests that there might be a reason to think a ransom was paid.
The story is compelling, and if you don't get too hung up on the detail (loose ends like those above occur every 20 pages or so), you will enjoy this rendering of the Elizabethan world. It gave me a whole new perspective from which to view all else about this period.
Not bad. December 18, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Definitely not as dry as straight history textbooks or as fanciful as the title might make you think, it takes fact and presents it in an interesting way.
 The Queen of the Pirates December 17, 2007
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
I love history and I love pirates. Thankfully history never goes away and pirates are more popular than ever. I grew up on stories of Sir Francis Drake, the most prominent of her majesty the queen's privateer, who took his letters of marquee and seized a place in legend for himself. But I never really got into the true story about the man until I was more grown up. By then I was majoring in history in college and found the stories even more interesting because I recognized them as men who had to overcome their fears before they became swashbuckling heroes.
I was, however, guilty of not thinking overmuch about the lady that gave men like Drake the chance to become my childhood heroes. Her journey, her decisions, were - upon reflection - even harder and more awe-inspiring than her privateers.
Called the Virgin Queen, and that must have been a hard one to deal with back in her day, Elizabeth I rose to the throne a month after she turned 25. She was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who was beheaded at the order of her husband Henry VIII. A beheading served as a divorce at the time because the Anglican Church hadn't instituted divorce as acceptable.
For a while, Elizabeth was declared illegitimate and had no shot at the throne. That struggle was only one of many she faced, as well as religious problems within the nation and war with Spain.
Historian Susan Ronald brings all of the adventure and excitement of Elizabeth I's life to the pages of her book. I'm ADHD and even though I love history, I oftentimes find wading through "scholarly" approaches to material I'm interested in very hard reading. My attention span wanders and I lose track in the middle of baroque sentences.
This isn't so with Ronald's book. She effectively nailed me to the pages with her engrossing spinning of Elizabeth I's trials and travails. When I first hefted the book, and it is certainly hefty, I have to admit to being somewhat daunted. But then I began turning the pages. And kept turning the pages.
Eiizabeth I's struggles to right the English economy, deal with controversy over her lineage and the religious changes she made, all became drama played out in my mind's eye. Ronald painted sets with her words, and the people came to life. Reading this book is effortless, and it provides a splendid study of that time and the people involved.
I'd been fascinated by the Spanish Armada and how it was destroyed in 1588, but I hadn't really felt all that was at stake if they'd won against England. The Cold War that played out between Russia and the United States between 1950s-1980s had nothing on the conflict that took place on the Atlantic Ocean during Elizabeth's reign.
Although the book focuses a lot on the Queen's privateers - legalized pirates by any other name - much time is spent with her relationship with Robert Dudley, the Earl of Liecester, Thomas Seymore - who was her guardian for a time, as well as those famous pirates, Sir Francis Drake, and Admiral John Hawkins.
Ronald's book is an armchair historian's dream and a keen, mostly unbiased, look at one of history's most famous and most daring women. If you've ever been interested in pirates or English history during a most dangerous time when history could have flipped in any of several directions, THE PIRATE QUEEN: ELIZABETH I, HER DARING ADVENTURERS, AND THE DAWN OF EMPIRE is definitely a book you should pick up.
Although almost 500 pages long, take heart in the fact that the book is heavily documents and several of those pages are reference. The layout of the book, wide margins and easy-to-read typeface, also make it extremely attractive in this time of microscopic fonts.
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