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The Invisible Hook
- The Hidden Economics of Pirates
- Narrated by: Jeremy Gage
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
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When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, America faced a crisis. The new nation was deeply in debt and needed its economy to grow quickly, but its merchant ships were under attack. Pirates from North Africa's Barbary coast routinely captured American sailors and held them as slaves, demanding ransom and tribute payments far beyond what the new country could afford.
Publisher's Summary
Why did pirates fly flags of Skull & Bones? Why did they create a "pirate code"? Were pirates really ferocious madmen? And what made them so successful? The Invisible Hook uses economics to examine these and other infamous aspects of piracy. Leeson argues that the pirate customs we know and love resulted from pirates responding rationally to prevailing economic conditions in the pursuit of profits.
The Invisible Hook looks at legendary pirate captains like Blackbeard, Black Bart Roberts, and Calico Jack Rackam, and shows how pirates' search for plunder led them to pioneer remarkable and forward-thinking practices. Pirates understood the advantages of constitutional democracy - a model they adopted more than 50 years before the United States did so. Pirates also initiated an early system of workers' compensation, regulated drinking and smoking, and in some cases practiced racial tolerance and equality. Leeson contends that pirates exemplified the virtues of vice - their self-seeking interests generated socially desirable effects and their greedy criminality secured social order. Pirates proved that anarchy could be organized.
Revealing the democratic and economic forces propelling history's most colorful criminals, The Invisible Hook establishes pirates' trailblazing relevance to the contemporary world.
Critic Reviews
"A brisk, clever new book." (The New Yorker)
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What listeners say about The Invisible Hook
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- L. Darragh
- 10-11-2020
good read
interesting book, easy to get through. some of the early chapters it felt like he was going over the same things over and over to a point we're I thought my chapters were looping.
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- Garth
- 31-01-2017
Great!
Both entertaining and informative, the Invisible Hook was well paced and a great book for a long drive.I couldn't fault it
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- Anonymous User
- 17-04-2023
A good listen
A good look at why pirates acted how they did. Worth a listen. Well spoken
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- Anonymous User
- 24-01-2023
Eugh libertarian economists
Some interesting historical tidbits, but way too much shoehorning facts to fit libertarianism. Also things like "why did pirates have fire safety rules", or "why did pirates want to appear scary" turned into elaborate lectures on economic theory - when the answer is patently obvious to normal people.
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