This Open Access book, Crisis and Legitimacy in Atlantic American Narratives of Piracy: 1678-1865, examines literary and visual representations of piracy beginning with A.O. Exquemelin’s 1678 Buccaneers of America and ending at the onset of the US-American Civil War. Examining both canonical and understudied texts—from Puritan sermons, James Fenimore Cooper’s The Red Rover, and Herman Mel…