In his new book, David Grann tells a classic sea yarn in a new way, overthrowing an old colonial story. Along the way, he charts a course for other tellers of modern adventure tales.
From a distance, The Wager looks like an old-fashioned thing. And in some hands the story might have heaved along like the ship itself: a relic of the 18th century, worn and worm-eaten, wearing only a new coat of paint. But Grann is one of America’s most meticulous narrative nonfiction writers, whether describing a septuagenerian bank robber for the New Yorker, or a French serial impostor, or a man trudging alone across Antarctica.
