Alex's Reviews > The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic

i really like this book for the amazing information it possesses, but the nebulous writing style really hurts it. this is basically a book about the spawning of capitalism, and the resistance to it, on both sides of the Atlantic, from 1600-1800. it deals with slavery and slave revolts, indentured servitude and pirates, land enclosures and Levellers, witch hunts and women heretics, and the Irish! the book is amazing for showing how the original anti-capitalist movements were very multiracial, multinational, often led by women, and took place on land and sea. however, the topic at time seems too broad, or perhaps too ill-defined, for the book's narrative to keep the reader's attention. often it focuses on specific individuals as representatives of different classes and groups of rebels, but it often doesn't give a solid narrative of what these people actually did. at times i lost track of what the overall point was, even though, to be sure, the information i was soaking up was fascinating. also i just think the writing could have been better. sometimes one sentence fills an entire paragraph, and has about 5 qualifying clauses. shorter, clearer, sentences would have helped a lot. so too would clear topic sentences at the beginning of each section or chapter. but there are a LOT of positives in The Many Headed Hydra, and the book is definitely recommended for all the stories it communicates from our collective past. a past which has been intentionally obscured and hidden from us, to keep us in the dark about our own legacies of resistance to capitalism.