You don't have to be a fan of sea stories or sailing to enjoy Grann's latest. In fact, it sounds like a terrible way to live. Grann brings it all to life.

My review of The Wager can be found here: https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/24092-disaster-sea-and-survival-david-grann-s-wager

This is a bit hard to come up with a star rating for, but if I had to pick, it’d probably be a 3 or 4. I was very intimated by this but I’m glad I read it! It was pretty digestible for its content, unlike other heavily historical non-fictions I’ve read. I learned a lot, and was very interested to see how things would be wrapped up. I would recommend for fans of true crime and dark history looking for something different to read.

As usual, David Grann has done it again. I take the best vacations with him and "The Wager" made the best cruise ship! Highly recommend for any history buffs!

This 18th century true story is for anyone who enjoys reading about naval misadventures and heroism in the face of great odds. Mixing themes from “In the Heart of the Sea” and “Mutiny on the Bounty” the Wager combines harrowing navigational challenges, violence and group paranoia. You will breeze through this tale of British naval overreach and wish it were longer. David Grann writes beautifully about an unremarkable ship with a very remarkable history.

4 stars.

Exceptional storytelling, very well-structured, and engaging right from the start. I haven't read David Grann's previous book, "Killers of the Flower Moon," but did hear him speak at our Morristown (NJ) Festival of Books a few years ago. Because I read this as an e-book, I missed out on pictures that I'm sure are in the print book, and that would probably help me visualize everything/everyone better. In any event, I highly recommend this book.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Grann has, once again, authored a book brimming with suspense.
Just the premise is fascinating. In 1742, a British ship smashes into the coast of Brazil with, approximately, 30 bedraggled sailors. They have an unbelievable story to relate to the authorities.
Yet, that is just the beginning of the story. About 6 months later, another vessel smashes into a nearby country with 3 sailors disputing (bigtime) the previous story told by the first ship.
Grann's vivid descriptions of the physical hardships were rampant throughout the book and his masterful writing made it that more real. The cold, the hunger, the rain, and the insecurities permeated the story and it was impossible not to feel the intensity of the numerous calamities.
The moral questions that were dissected in the book were so powerful. Where should the line be drawn between mutiny and defending your beliefs? How do you decide which of the moral issues of a question is the right one?
This was a thought-provoking examination of human values as well as an exhilarating and compelling story. Another great one by Grann!

Although my genre is usually not non-fiction, I very much enjoyed this story. many times I had to wipe the salt from my lips. That’s how I felt.

A thrilling, detailed, meticuously researched account of the 1742 wreck and mutiny of the British ship "The Wager". Based on numerous first hand accounts,the author has recreated every minute of this gripping seafaring saga. Added references to 18th century maritime customs and folklore complete the picture. My father would have loved this book.

2.5/5 stars - An interesting read but not quite as gripping as Lost City of Z for me, which I was looking for in a shipwreck kind of way. Learned a lot about the insanity of seafarers before we knew what scurvy was and how isolation on an ocean can lead to incredibly power crazy people.

I love everything that David Grann writes. The Lost City of Z and Killers of the Flower Moon are two of my favorite nonfiction books of all time. His latest, The Wager, is another fascinating read.

In 1742, a ship called the Wager wrecked on an island near Patagonia during a war between Britain and Spain. Thirty men survived and built a small boat to sail for over 100 days, eventually reaching Brazil. They were seen as heroes for their journey.

However, six months later, another boat arrived in Chile with only three survivors who told a different story. They claimed that the sailors who landed in Brazil were actually mutineers, rebelling against a cruel officer. The two groups accused each other of treachery and murder. To find out the truth, a court martial was held, and the guilty party could face execution.

This is the best book I've read this year. It's beautifully researched and the blow-by-blow retelling is more compelling than most of the thrillers I've read this year. There are a couple of gaps in the story — nothing major. Just parts that are lost to history. I appreciate the author for not guessing his way through filling in the blanks with his own suppositions.

There are quotes from authors like Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad that bring life to this tale that had me flying through this book that I did not want to end. If you love nonfiction and nautical history, you have to read this.

David Grann follows up his hugely successful Killers of the Flower Moon with another nonfiction tale of men in peril and facing incredible hardship at the risk of their lives. The British warship Wager sets sail to round the tip of South America but is wrecked on the rocks. From this point the survivors face disease and starvation but also death from different splinter groups that have formed. The journey to rescue is every bit as harrowing as the wreck but several suvivors finally make it back to England, only to be put on trial for mutiny. Gleaned from narratives published after-the-fact, Grann presents a forgotten piece of history that seemingly has been forgotten. A great choice for armchair adventurers.

This was an incredible look at an event in history that I knew nothing about. I haven't spend a great deal of time in my life thinking about the long and dangerous voyages across the sea that established new colonies, trade routes, and naturally were rife with piracy. Reading this book opened my eyes to the reality and the dangers that were experienced on the sea, not only from the sea herself, but from starvation, severe malnourishment, and disease. One wrong move on a ship could prove fatal, and decisions often had to be made in minutes that could either sink or save the ship.

The story of The Wager is an interesting one because it is a tale about what happens when a group of sailors are shipwrecked and break into factions. Is it mutiny if one group decides to take their chances and leave rather than risk imminent starvation? Does their arrival home make them heroes or villains? And who is actually telling the truth about the wreck and what happened on the island?

While parts of the book might seem slow-going, every detail is purposeful and important. There are some violent and gruesome scenes in this book however that might not be for the faint of heart.

I found this book to be well researched, well-written and extremely easy to read. It was actually quite a thrilling read to be honest. It felt more like I was reading an adventure book than a nonfiction book. The beginning was slow for me to get into, but once the boats set sail, the pacing picked up immensely and I was hooked at that point. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one.

David Grann is always worth a read. It's a story of shipwreck and castaways and the hypocrisy of colonialism. I understand this was a book about the Wager and fellow ships, but I just wanted more from the perspective of the Indigenous people who ended up aiding castaways.

Absolutely riveting new work from David Grann. Grann's attention to detail and historical narration never fail to disappoint. Even those uninterested in the sea and shipwrecks will find this to be a captivating study of the human condition.

I previously really enjoyed Grann's The Lost City of Z and Killers of the Flower Moon. I have also recently been really into stories of survival, so I thought this was going to be a huge hit for me. Unfortunately, it fell a little bit flat.

The Wager is unquestionably well-researched and written. The problem I had was with expectations. It is presented as a story of mutiny, survival, and courtroom drama, but it takes over half of the book before we get to any of that. The first part is a background on British ships and military and the lives of the men on The Wager. Once we finally get to the part that was promised, I felt like it was glossed over. Events of the wreck and journey through the sea were presented quickly and matter-of-factly. We barely see anything of the trial that is spoken about in the blurb.

Overall, a good book, but one I probably wouldn't have picked up if I'd known better what to expect. My interests just don't align in the way I thought they did.

For you if you like:
-Military history
-Life of a sailor
-Straightforward writing

Grann has the singular talent to make non-fiction as page-turning and exciting as a bestselling thriller novel. The Wager is just as good as his previous novels. You will not want to put it down until you have reached the end, eager to determine which side "wins". In such a complex case it is hard to say that any (except maybe Byron) of these sailors are entirely right (good) or wrong (bad). I don't want to give anything away - so I will just say that the ending is a bit surprising. After this book, I will never read a Patrick O'Brian book with the same romanticized viewpoint. In any case, this will, rightfully so, be a bestseller.

For centuries, Spanish galleons plied their way between Manila and Acapulco, the one trading route between Spain’s colonies in Asia and the Americas. Their twice-yearly Pacific crossings brought silver west from Mexico and silks and spices east from the Philippines. These valuable ships were a prime target for Spain’s enemies but proved elusive in thousands of miles of open ocean. Only four times in over 250 years did a Spanish galleon fall into enemy hands. One of the lucky ships to capture one was helmed by British Commodore George Anson, in 1743.

Two years earlier, Anson’s vessel Centurion was the lead ship in a flotilla dispatched from Britain to the Pacific to harass the Spanish as part of the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739–48). They planned to attack some of Spain’s ports on the Chilean coast of South America, before pushing on to see if they could get a galleon as well. Unfortunately, they didn’t even reach the Pacific before the plan started to come apart. Ships in the squadron sank or, in one case, turned back rather than face the challenge of rounding Cape Horn. One ship, HMS Wager, captained by David Cheap, managed to limp around the Cape only to be wrecked off the coast of Chile. There was a mutiny among the surviving crew, and David Grann recounts their story in his new book, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder, published by Doubleday.

....
full review at https://newcriterion.com/blogs/dispatch/stranded-in-the-pacific

An armada of British Man-o-War ships sets sail, after much delay and some shoddy preparation, on a mission that is to take it around the world, including navigation around treacherous Cape Horn. Given the subtitle of the book, it's not a spoiler to say that it doesn't go well. There is scurvy, there are vicious storms. The ship Wager navigates too close to the rocks, and its surviving crewmembers are stranded on an incredibly desolate island. What happens after that eventually becomes subject of fierce debate and a court-martial.

I was eager to read this because I loved Grann's "Killers of the Flower Moon.". Once again, Grann creates a meticulously researched work, with copious notes, which reads almost like a suspense novel. This book didn't grasp me quite as quickly as the previous work, because British military history is a little less close to my heart than 20th-century American history. However, once I acclimated myself to the maritime culture of the time, it became quite a compelling read, with a rather surprising ending. Recommended for readers who enjoy history and/or maritime tales.

I received my copy from NetGalley.