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Un libro da leggere da chi, per qual si voglia motivo, voglia comprendere come è nato il mondo moderno. Spesso la fiumana del progresso ha travolto affascinanti culture libertarie e solidali. ( )

A fascinating conglomeration of social, economic, religious, and political history of the North Atlantic world in the 18th century.

I won The Many-Headed Hydra as part of a Goodreads giveaway.

Linebaugh and Rediker look at the social history of England, the eastern seaboard of North America, the Caribbean, and the ocean that connected them, from early colonization to the turn of the 19th century. Told from the perspective of Marxist historians, the emphasis is generally put on class, but within that distinction are stories of racial, religious, and political minorities.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the book wasn't strictly limited to life on the high seas; rather, it was a history of the economies on both sides of the Atlantic and the everyday (and not so everyday) non-elite people who built them, laying the ground work for the modern capitalist society.

As a history major and buff, a lot of the "big ideas" put forth weren't particularly new to me, as academic historians' interest in social history has intensified enormously in the last generation or so. The individual stories, however, were fascinating. Linebaugh and Rediker present a very different world from the one you may have been taught in history class: whereas the American founding fathers are depicted as radical revolutionaries in popular culture, they were actually quite conservative in comparison to many of the populist, radical movements that were the undercurrent of the Age of Revolution.

Recommended, especially for those with a budding interest in social history and/or this particular place and time in history. ( )

The culture of the Atlantic in an era of rapid expansion of trade, and the influence of sailors, slaves, pirates, and others in the creation of a new global economy. The notion of pirates as a free-enterprise and somewhat democratic alternative to the indentured sailors and more-or-less captive roving workforce options of the time is truly thought provoking. I’ll never see pirates in quite the same way again. The intersection of aspects of the slave trade and the growing abolitionist movement with the developing Atlantic culture is a fascinating story told well by Linebaugh and Rediker. Certainly my favorite book of 2000 and one of my all-time favorites. ( )