A friend recommended the author Brian Killmeade, so I decided to give him a try. He is a TV and radio presenter as well as an author, and I was pleasantly surprised to find I enjoyed this. Killmeade has adapted several of his adult books for younger readers, this title being one of them, and it did hold my interest. It is a chronicle of US naval history on the Barbary coast, from 1785 to 1805. It began with an attack on a US merchant ship, the Dauphin, in 1785, off the coast of Portugal. Algerian pirates seized the goods and imprisoned the crew as slaves for over 10 years. Jefferson advocated for the creation of a navy to fight the pirates, but it wasn’t until realized until after the US Constitution took effect in 1789, providing for the creation of a navy. But the first three frigates built for the navy weren’t launched until 1797, and a diplomat in Algiers finally was able to successfully negotiate for the release of the surviving prisoners. This title contains notes, a bibliography and a timeline, making it a useful source. I would recommend it for readers age 10 and older.