#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon a page-turning
story of shipwreck survival and savagery culminating in a court martial that reveals a
shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on The Wager
showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial but the very idea of
empire. A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times The Wall Street Journal The New Yorker
TIME Smithsonian NPR Vulture Kirkus Reviews Riveting...Reads like a thriller tackling a
multilayered history—and imperialism—with gusto. —Time A tour de force of narrative nonfiction.
—The Wall Street JournalOn January 28 1742 a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and
cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men barely alive and
they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager a
British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with
Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as the prize of
all the oceans it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men after
being marooned for months and facing starvation built the flimsy craft and sailed for more
than a hundred days traversing nearly 3 000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as
heroes.But then ... six months later another even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of
Chile. This boat contained just three castaways and they told a very different story. The
thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers. The first group
responded with countercharges of their own of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and
his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into
anarchy with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations
of treachery and murder flew the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was
telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death—for whomever the court found guilty could
hang.The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest
nonfiction writers. Grann’s recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work
of Patrick O’Brian his portrayal of the castaways’ desperate straits stands up to the classics
of survival writing such as The Endurance and his account of the court martial has the savvy
of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann’s work the incredible twists of the narrative
hold the reader spellbound.
