Next Book: The Wager

 

The 1994 Book Club's next reading selection is The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder, by David Grann, New Yorker staff writer and bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon. 

The Wager is Grann's 2023 nonfiction account of a British ship that left England in 1740 as part of a flotilla on a secret mission to find a treasure-filled Spanish galleon in the Pacific Ocean, which required crossing the Atlantic and rounding Cape Horn. Instead, The Wager wrecked on a small island off the Patagonian coast. Survivors eventually made their way back to England - but with conflicting tales of what happened in the interim. 

In addition to being a fascinating sea tale, The Wager explores the ideas of disinformation and misinformation, and the sometimes dubious strategies nations use to build and maintain empires.

The next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, May 16, at 7 pm PT. 

Listen to David Grann talk about The Wager, his career, and more on Oregon Public Broadcasting's The Archive Project podcast here.

Listen to the Audible version of the book, narrated by Grann and Dion Graham here (8.5 hours).