The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon DeFoe

It's fun, it's fast, and it's destined to be a classic, or at least a Terry Gilliam movie.

The best way to describe the style of The Pirates! book is to say that...well... imagine a ten year old bookworm who loved pirates very much got drunk and then tried to tell an adventure story involving pirates and Charles Darwin. Yeah, that pretty much captures it. The crew of the ship, along with the ship itself, tend not to have names so much as descriptions. The captain's name is The Pirate Captain. His loyal crew includes The Pirate with an Accordion, The Pirate with a Scarf, and The Pirate who was prone to exaggeration. This crew manages to get into a misadventure involving Charles Darwin and his quest to breed a Man-panzee, which is basically a chimp with very good manners, fashion sense, and the ability to communicate using flashcards. The pirates love ham, and love to debate the best ways to prepare ham. They've had adventures with cowboys. There are swordfights, battles involving the periodic table of elements, the Elephant Man, scurvy, and a tag-team wrestling match involving the Holy Ghost and monkeys!

DeFoe's humor seems to be, amazingly, based on meticulous research. For every mention of disco, Elvis, or... well, Charles Darwin, there are footnotes, facts, and data that seem to shape and support humor in the book. Here's to the next adventure with the Pirates! May their next voyage be as farcical as the last.