Pack your cutlass and blunderbuss--it's time to go a-pirating "The Invisible Hook" takes readers inside the wily world of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century pirates. With swashbuckling irreverence and devilish wit, Peter Leeson uncovers the hidden economics behind pirates' notorious, entertaining, and sometimes downright shocking behavior. Why did pirates fly flags of Skull and 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 fifty 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.

彼得•裏森——生於1979年，2005年取得博士學位後在母校佐治•梅遜大學任助教，僅兩年時間， 30歲的他便已成為正教授並獲得“BB&T講座教授”頭銜，可見他在學術上頗有建樹且有極佳的人際關係網。

在本書中，他將讓讀者大飽眼福，看到隱藏在海盜們虛張聲勢的傲慢與魔鬼般的纔智背後，在海盜們那些臭名昭著但又令人發笑有時甚至令人震驚不已的種種行為背後，有著怎樣的經濟學。