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2 Formats: CD
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2 Formats: Library CD
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ISBN: 9780307747488
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ISBN: 9780307747488
Runtime: | 8.48 Hours |
Category: | Nonfiction/True Crime |
Audience: | Adult |
Language: | English |
Summary
Summary
Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award
Finalist for the Audie Award for Best Nonfiction Narration
Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
A #1 New York Times bestseller
A New York Times Bestseller in Audio
An AudioFile Best Audiobook of the Year
One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of the Year
A New York Times Best Book of the Year
A Time Magazine Best Book of 2023
A New Yorker Best Books of the Year Pick
A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2023
A Smithsonian Magazine Pick of 2023's Best Books
An NPR Best Book of the Year
A Barnes & Noble Best Book of 2023
One of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2023
A New York Times Bestseller in Audio
A Wall Street Journal bestseller
A #1 GLIBA Bestseller
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author comes a thrilling story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth.
With the twists and turns, David Grann unearths 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.
On 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 2,500 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.
But 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 listener spellbound.
Editorial Reviews
Editorial Reviews
Details
Details
Available Formats : | CD, Library CD |
Category: | Nonfiction/True Crime |
Runtime: | 8.48 |
Audience: | Adult |
Language: | English |
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