42 used & new from $0.73

Have one to sell? Sell yours here

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists: A Novel

See all product images
See 1 customer image

I own the rights to this title and would like to make it available again through Amazon.

Tell the Publisher! I�d like to read this book on Kindle Don�t have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here.

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists: A Novel (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (30 customer reviews)

Available from these sellers.

7 new from $7.75 32 used from $0.73 3 collectible from $28.00

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Ahab: A novel

by Gideon Defoe

4.2 out of 5 stars (21) $12.44

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists: A Novel

by Gideon Defoe

4.5 out of 5 stars (13) $11.96

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Napoleon: A Novel

by Gideon Defoe

4.5 out of 5 stars (4) $11.53

Sherlock Holmes : The Complete Novels and Stories (Bantam Classic) Volume I

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

4.7 out of 5 stars (19) $6.95

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists

by Gideon Defoe

5.0 out of 5 stars (2) $8.22

› Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

In a style reminiscent of Monty Python and Douglas Adams (or so the publisher asserts) comes this tiny tome from fledgling author Defoe, set in the early 1800s (although filled with anachronisms such as Post-it Notes and dental floss). The adventure begins as the pirate captain (none of the crew have names, just descriptions, such as the "pirate with the red scarf" and the "pirate dressed in green") mistakes Charles Darwin's ship, Beagle, for a treasure ship from the Bank of England and boards it. Darwin's only claim to fame at this point is that he has taught an ape--a Man-panzee by the name of Mr. Bobo--to behave as a proper, albeit speechless, English gentleman. The pirate captain and Darwin, now chums, head back to England to rescue Darwin's brother, who has been abducted by the evil bishop of Oxford. Once in foggy London, the pirates encounter damsels in distress, nefarious schemes, and even the Elephant Man. Aficionados of outre British humor should find this amusing. Michael Gannon
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Description

Not since Moby-Dick...No, not since Treasure Island...Actually, not since Jonah and the Whale has there been a sea saga to rival The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, featuring the greatest sea-faring hero of all time, the immortal Pirate Captain, who, although he lives for months at a time at sea, somehow manages to keep his beard silky and in good condition.

Worried that his pirates are growing bored with a life of winking at pretty native ladies and trying to stick enough jellyfish together to make a bouncy castle, the Pirate Captain decides it's high time to spearhead an adventure.

While searching for some major pirate booty, he mistakenly attacks the young Charles Darwin's Beagle and then leads his ragtag crew from the exotic Galapagos Islands to the fog-filled streets of Victorian London. There they encounter grisly murder, vanishing ladies, radioactive elephants, and the Holy Ghost himself. And that's not even the half of it.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

Hardcover: 144 pages
Publisher: Pantheon (October 19, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0375423214
ISBN-13: 978-0375423215
Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.6 x 0.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces

Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (30 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #690,607 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

› Visit Amazon's Gideon Defoe Page

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	48% buy the item featured on this page: The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists: A Novel 4.7 out of 5 stars (30)
	15% buy The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists 5.0 out of 5 stars (2) $8.22
	14% buy The Pirates!: An Adventure with Scientists & An Adventure with Ahab 4.9 out of 5 stars (7) $8.80
	13% buy The Pirates! In an Adventure with Napoleon: A Novel 4.5 out of 5 stars (4) $11.53

Explore similar items

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

(What's this?)

Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.

pirates(10)

adventure(6)

ham(6)

darwin(4)

evolution(4)

comedy(3)

comics(2)

gideon defoe(2)

contemporary fiction(1)

fiction(1)

funny books(1)

See all 14 tags...

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

Customer Reviews

30 Reviews

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Review

4.7 out of 5 stars (30 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scurvy Doggerel: In Praise of 'The Pirates!', August 5, 2005

By	bensmomma "bensmomma" (Ann Arbor, Michigan) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Oh, to be a pirate captain with a fine luxurious beard,
Spearheadin' an adventure three parts farce and one part weird,
In which Mr. Charles Darwin in a prominent role you'll see,
Amazing all of London with Bobo the Man-panzee.

The evil Bishop of Oxford tries to scupper Darwin's plans,
To show off Bobo's manners, equal to a gentleman's,
This monkey knows which spoon to use, can make a fine cocktail,
So the pirates must assure the Bishop's wicked scheme will fail.

The pirate dressed in green appears, the pirate with the hook,
And the albino pirate cavorts through this funny book,
They live on ham and Cocoa Puffs (and limes to quench their thirsts),
But there's one what dies of scurvy cause he lives on Lime Starbursts.

Oh somewhere folks're reading stuff that's solemn and demure,
But if you've a taste for Python then this book you will prefer,
'Cause nowhere else on God's Green Earth a funnier book you'll see,
What ho, Defoe! Please write some mo'!
'The Pirates!," that's for me!

Comment Comments (2) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book! Aaargh!, February 23, 2005

By	Debra Hamel (TwitterLit.com) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

When they're not belting out a lusty sea shanty or arguing about the best way to prepare ham, there's nothing pirates like more than a rousing adventure. Happily, that's just what's in store for the Pirate Captain and his shipful of variously monikered pirates--the scarf-wearing pirate, the pirate with an accordion, the ill-fated balding archeologist pirate--when they bump into Charles Darwin and his trained monkey Mr. Bobo in the South Pacific. Together, Darwin and the pirates sail off to England to combat the Bishop of Oxford, an evil-mustachioed villain with a diabolical scheme involving the grisly murder of numerous circus-going women. The Pirate Captain may be an unusually gullible scofflaw, and--how to put this nicely--he's not the sharpest cutlass in the drawer, but his peculiar combination of hirsute manliness, keen introspection ("Damn my piratical nature!"), and roguish je ne sais quoi may be just the thing needed to defeat the Oxfordian knave.

Gideon Defoe's exuberant The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists purports to be an account set down some 150 years ago by the debonair Pirate Captain himself--so the Captain's note to readers (specifically, negligee-clad, nineteen-year-old readers) on the back of the book alleges. (Careful readers may doubt the account's historicity, though, given its frequent anachronisms--references to Murder, She Wrote, for example, and Cocoa Puffs. I'll leave it to readers to nitpick.) It comes complete with the occasional footnote, some of the entries very odd indeed: "Black looks best on persons who have black in their features (hair, eyes, brows, and lashes), although black can be worn by most people for very dramatic occasions." There is also a handful of helpful questions for discussion in the back of the book. (For example, number seven: "Scientifically speaking, who do you think the tallest pirate in the world is?")

If it's not clear enough by now, Defoe's Pirates is a hilarious read filled with some extremely clever writing. Not for nothing has Monty Python's Eric Idle blurbed it as "destined to become a classic of pirate comic fiction." You'll want to read this one.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fantastical! Piratical! Anachronistical!, December 24, 2004

By	Bruce Crocker "agnostictrickster" (Whittier, California United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

Part of the fun of reading Gideon Defoe's The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists is picking up on the anachronisms that litter the book like dead lubbers. Some are obvious - Post-It Notes - and some are less so - things in the Natural History Museum in London that will be there long past the year the story takes place [brontosaurus wouldn't make it into the Natural History Museum until at least 50 years after the story takes place]. The basic story goes like this - pirates capture Charles Darwin and the crew of the Beagle and they go to London and have an adventure. If the reader has issues with suspension of disbelief, then this slim volume will be tough going. Some knowledge of pirates and the real people in Darwin's cohort are necessary to get a lot of the jokes [Darwin's pet bulldog in the story is named Huxley]. The humor is very British [although understandable on this side of the pond] and very silly. Although they probably won't have a lot of the background necessary to find it funny, this book is safe for young readers, the worst things in it being very mild innuendo and swear words represented by assorted punctuation marks. This is the type of book you can knock off in a couple of hours on a lazy afternoon while sipping rum in the sun. I doubt it will ever be a bestseller [and it didn't win the author the hand of the young lady he was trying to impress], but if you like pirates, Darwin, and have a sense of humor, you should find the book a short and enjoyable read.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 30 customer reviews...

Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious!
A laugh a minute. Enjoyed immensely by my whole family. Can't wait for the next one in the series!

Published 12 months ago by Sherman fan

5.0 out of 5 stars Wacky, Luxuriously Curly Humor Inside a Fun, Easy Story
You just have to love a novel that has "piratical" in it, twice no less, right on the back cover!

The specs: it's a hardcover, but dinky. Read more

Published 17 months ago by Sir Charles Panther

4.0 out of 5 stars Pirates and Science -- a Dangerous Mix
Belay your search for a salty tale and batten on to this slender tome! Creationists may want to avoid this book, as Charles Darwin is a central character. Read more

Published on May 26, 2007 by S. C. Kahlich

5.0 out of 5 stars The Pirates!
The Pirates! are hilarious in there unexpected adventures! I can't wait for the next one!

Published on March 9, 2007 by Erik Rausch

5.0 out of 5 stars Pirates! In an Adventure with Me
If you love Monty Python - you'll love the Pirates! series. Get ready to howl with laughter - you won't be disappointed (Though, if this is your first, I'd start with An Adventure... Read more

Published on January 15, 2007 by K. Terry

5.0 out of 5 stars Intellectually humorous
This is one of the few books that I finished really fast. It may be because it is a relatively short novel, but it is also because it is never boring and reading it doesn't... Read more

Published on December 12, 2006 by watersplash

5.0 out of 5 stars 4.5 stars really, rounded up
When the book jacket says you wrote a book to try and steal a girl away from another guy, you better have written a gut-wrenching romantic novel, suspense filled drama, or... Read more

Published on April 28, 2006 by R. Howell

2.0 out of 5 stars Been there, done that
Another in the series of misadventures and deadbeat characterizations. Stick with the FLASHMAN series, or anything by Swift, to see how this genre should be done.

Published on February 20, 2006 by L. Ward

5.0 out of 5 stars More Fun Than Carving a Fresh Baked Ham!
My plumed hat is off to Gideon Defoe for bringing readers a fun, farcical treasure of a book. Fans of Douglas Adams and Jasper Fforde will love this author's work as well... Read more

Published on January 16, 2006 by frfubar8

5.0 out of 5 stars Not everyday pirates!
The humor in this book is so beyond heavy that it becomes light again. I'm not sure how Mr. Defoe can write this stuff without falling over backwards laughing at his own work,... Read more

Published on January 7, 2006 by S. Potter

› See all 30 customer reviews...

.jsOffDisplayBlock { display: block; } .jsOffDisplayInline { display: inline; } .jsOffVisibility { visibility: visible; } .jsOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jsOnDisplayNoneBlock { display: block; } .jsOnDisplayNoneInline { display: inline; } .jsOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jsOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; } .jqOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jqOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jqOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; } .jqOnDisplayNoneBlock { display: block; } .jqOnDisplayNoneInline { display: inline; }

Customer Discussions

This product's forum

Discussion	Replies	Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight

Start a new discussion

Topic:

First post:

Receive e-mail when new posts are made

Prompts for sign-in

Guidelines

Active discussions in related forums

Discussion	Replies	Latest Post
adventure Adventure books with no sex	171	18 hours ago
adventure Sex & romance in adventure novels	9	2 days ago
adventure Yachting fiction	8	7 days ago
pirates Why haven't there been any new pirate movies?	12	7 days ago
womens fiction Best historical novel on race, gender, class, sexuality?	4	12 days ago
adventure Experiments in promoting a Kindle Book	0	20 days ago