Tom Long's Reviews > The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines & the Secret Mission of 1805

I purposely did not refresh my knowledge of this incident in history. I wanted to first see it through the author's eyes. Had I done even a modicum of research, I might have declined to invest so heavily in a tale of Eaton. Although history did not quite work out in the way I had hoped (no fault of the author of course), the writing was well-paced and descriptive. I feel that I was fed a knowledge of North African culture and history, well beyond anything picked up in school, by means of an engrossing yarn. It was outside my comfort zone of light or abstract reading, but the effort was rewarding. Someone with a darker temperament might well give this story four or five stars.