black people. To counteract this, and to encourage those enslaved to join their crew, pirates integrated bondsmen into their ships as completely free members. However, this was inconsistent among certain pirate societies – some granted equal rights, but some still participated in the slave trade, and some did both. This progressive notion however, indicated that pirates applied ideas of equality even before those same ideas in the Declaration of Independence were written. Leeson does note that pirate tolerance was not produced by the ideas of equality and fairness, but instead was produced by the cost-benefit and compensation promises made by their leaders – this includes the charters developed, which included a worker’s compensation. It outlined that a lost limb would entitle one to payment from the treasure, on top of their already promised payment equal to every other crew member. Critical reception The Invisible Hook was a winner of the 2009 Best International Nonfiction Book and a winner of the 2009 Gold Medal Book of the Year Award in Business and Economics. Leeson’s book was also a winner of San Francisco Chronicle’s 100 Best Books for 2009 and has been praised by several academics. Claude Berube from the Washington Times says that Lesson has produced a “fresh” perspective on an old topic. Berube also describes how Leeson quells “the pirate myths” through economic theory. The New Yorker’s Caleb Crain details the book as “brisk” and “clever”. Edward Glaeser from the Economix blog identifies that Leeson’s book utilises the tools of economics to “make sense” of piracy. Virgil Henry Storr’s review of The Invisible Hook calls Leeson’s “fantastic” book a demonstration that even a community of criminals can operate with a government. However, Storr also claims that the book raises the question as to why a government is “a prerequisite for peace”. Storr compares Leeson’s pirate organisations to Hayek’s definition of society and describes that “pirate societies” are created to “provide service and earn profit” (Storr, 2010, pp. 294). Storr also compliments Leeson on his convincing work of explaining why pirate governance was not government, however argues that he did not explain why pirate governance worked. Per L. Bylund’s review of The Invisible Hook describes that Leeson claims piratical enterprise “resembled a Fortune 500 company” and conducted much like a for-profit business firm. Bylund argues that there is not much evidence to support this view, and the extent of resemblance between