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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
History and Biography, not Folklore, February 11, 2008
This review is from: The Pirates Laffite: The Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf (Paperback)
Here's the bottom line on this book: If you're looking for a colorful folk tale of these characters, with all the atmospheric (and largely fictional) accoutrements, you're going to think that it's an "unreadable, tedious, overly detailed" bore.
If you want a well-researched narrative, one in which the author leaves no stone unturned in his search for authenticity, you'll like this book with all its warts.
This is a history book. It reads like a history book, with its emphasis on details, which brings our attention to facts that seek the more mundane truth of the matter. The life of the Laffites is so distorted by folklore that Dr. Davis has taken a hard line on archival detail and ambiguity.
He won't give you the answers to the questions he can't solve, and he won't give you the romantic picture of the setting he can't control.
This is a book for people more interested in history than pre-conceived imagery. Dr. Davis is a prolific author, and we know he has a tendency to crank out the words. That makes him subject to a few grammatical blunders from time to time, as he immerses himself in the subject matter. I will never criticize an historian for getting into his subject at the MINOR expense of a few mis-chosen conjunctions and misplaced commas.
For portraits of early American New Orleans and colonial Galveston, this book is a valuable contribution to the literature. I should mention that its annotation is extensive, as is its bibliography.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
In the context of their time, December 26, 2007
Pirates offers an interesting perspective of the period and the Gulf of Mexico. Most history is written about the winners. The Laffites are not winners, they are simply pirates operating under the ruse of being privateers. Davis portrays them as quintessentially fluid in their ability to change allegiances on a whim, or rather an utter lack of allegiance to anything other than their next deal. The smuggling of captured goods up into the bayou country is fascinating as is the acceptance of the brothers, their ilk and their trade by the citizenry of New Orleans (and the lower Mississippi River) for the inexpensive goods (and slaves)they provided.
Anyone interested in the early history of the US, anyone who liked David Niven's War of 1812, the intrigues of Aaron Burr and Col. James Williamson, Andrew Jackson's efforts in the west of the early 1800s, or the numerous plots to wrest Texas from the Spanish during this period, will find this a must read. (Ditto for all who live or are interested in southern Louisiana.)
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13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent double biography, full of adventure and intrigue!, April 30, 2005
In "The Pirates Laffite, the Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf," author William C. Davis presents an in-depth, thoroughly researched examination of the Laffite brothers' colorful lives, including new information about them discovered in archives of the United States and France. Davis separates the truth from romantic legend to reveal the Laffites as complex men adept at turning opportunities toward their advantage while skirting the edges of the law in the polyglot world of early 1800s New Orleans and the Gulf.
Written in an entertaining, chronological narrative style, this double biography is the most completely documented work ever written about Jean and Pierre Laffite. Most people are familiar with the legend of Jean Laffite and Galveston, or Jean Laffite and the Battle of New Orleans, but Jean's elder half-brother, Pierre, has received scant attention from previous historians and other writers. In "The Pirates Laffite," Davis aptly relates how Pierre was the mastermind of the Laffite brothers' operations, and that the brothers worked closely together for most of their lives, including the Galveston period.
Their true story, based on archival documents, letters and contemporary newspapers, paints a compelling portrait of enigmatic men on the edge of the new frontier of the Louisiana Purchase, seeking to make their mark on the world.
This book also sensitively tells the fascinating story of the Laffite's free black mistresses and children, carefully recorded from information in baptismal records, notarial archives, and other surviving documents. The women were involved in the then prevalent system of placage with the Laffites as their protectors.
"The Pirates Laffite" engages the reader magnificently, and even the sometimes lengthy footnotes are absorbing to read. A large book at 720 pages (with footnotes and index), it is a brilliant work about the Laffites' lives by a highly skilled historian. Davis, Director of Programs for the Civil War Center at Virginia Tech, is most well known for his numerous books about the Civil War. This finely polished double biography shows he is equally at home with the early national period of the southern United States and its people.
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