He fought and beheaded three Turkish adversaries in duels. He was sold into slavery, then murdered his master to escape. He sailed under a pirate flag, was shipwrecked and marched to the gallows to be hanged, only to be reprieved at the eleventh hour. And all this happened before he was thirty years old. This is Captain John Smith's life.
Everyone knows the story of Pocahontas, and how in 1607 she saved John Smith. And were it not for Smith's leadership, the Jamestown colony would surely have failed. Yet Smith was a far more ambitious explorer and soldier of fortune than these tales suggest - and a far more ambitious self-promoter, too. With A Man Most Driven, Firstbrook delivers a riveting, enlightening dissection of this myth-making man, England's arrival on the world stage, and the creation of America.
- ISBN10 1780747101
- ISBN13 9781780747101
- Publish Date 4 June 2015 (first published 1 January 2014)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 24 June 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Oneworld Publications
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 432
- Language English