2024 the best history books review

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(as of Dec 13, 2024 13:44:08 UTC - Details)

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a thrilling 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 Journal

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 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 listener spellbound.

Reviewer: Susan M Harris
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Reads Like A Historical Novel
Review: WOW! Quite a story. This is an enjoyable and easy read. Lots of twists and turns.Incredible to imagine that people survived such dire circumstances.Gann is a masterful writer.

Reviewer: D B.
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Grim, grimmer, grimmest
Review: The Wager is a good story about an awful experience. Shipwrecked on a desolate island off one of the earth’s most godforsaken coasts, the crew of HM Wager, a man of war, eked out a tempestuous existence trying to survive and escape. Their numbers reduced to a fraction of the original crew, they devolved into factions on enemies with former mates. Eventually, four or five groups made their way back to England, publishing accounts of their suffering in distinct contrast to one another.David Grann writes well and the book is a good read but even he seems overwhelmed by the multitude of warring primary narratives. The reader is allowed to founder and is hard pressed to choose a central truth. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whose narrative one chooses, for they are all completely grim.

Reviewer: Richard B. Schwartz
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Powerful Stuff
Review: Let me begin with the answer to a direct question: is this book better than KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON? Yes, and by a wide margin. This is a historical tale that draws on the powers of fictional narrative. First and foremost, the story must be true. Hence, the success of the story rises or falls on the quality of the historical incidents themselves, because the resulting story will directly affect the elements of the narrative that are essentially novelistic: characters, themes, setting and plot. The story of the Wager satisfies each of those elements. In other words, David Grann chose wisely. And such choices are always guesses, to some degree. Once the commitment is made to sift through mountains of documents and other evidentiary material, the die has been cast: the resulting story could be a crashing bore; key questions might never yield satisfactory answers; plot lines could end in blind alleys; themes could prove to be maudlin commonplaces, and so on. Not in this case. We have an array of fascinating characters, a great adventure story, a novelistic plot, a riveting setting and a sobering set of lessons learned.Basically we are in the War of Jenkins’ Ear; a set of British ships under the great seaman George Anson is dispatched to intercept and capture a Spanish galleon loaded with treasure. The voyage involves the negotiation of the treacherous winds and waters around Cape Horn. One ship—The Wager—is crushed against the rocks and the men must attempt to survive hunger, disease, and, as we say, insuperable odds, to somehow return to England and stand trial for their actions in Patagonia.I purchased the book as a backup for other books in my reviewing queue that were about to ship. After being disappointed by KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, but seeing the hype for THE WAGER, I decided to read it until more interesting books arrived. However, once I started to read it I simply could not stop. Only one small quibble: the book ends with what the author (SPOILER alert) considers a reflection on the evils of empire. In other words, a dash of seasoning from the Woke shaker. Ultimately, the story is relevant for our own times and our own preoccupation with colonizers/colonized/oppressors/oppressed, etc. It is worthwhile to point out that every thinking writer in the 18th century (especially the putatively most ‘conservative’ ones, Johnson and Burke) were opposed to the aspirations of empire, particularly as they involved self-interested motives. The book is being described as Master and Commander meets Lord of the Flies. Fair enough, but the brief, third act brings everything down to the seedy world of politics. The book does not end on some high, moral, virtue-signaling ground, but in the world that is simply all too familiar. Bishop Sheen said he gave up on politics after Pontius Pilate. Amen. That does not undercut the impact of the story. It simply reinforces the usefulness of James Ellroy’s category of ‘tragic realism’ and, in this case, the manner in which politics can dilute actions of heavily-compromised courage and determination and render them (publicly) mundane.

Reviewer: Cramedog
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: David Grann Wrote A BigDog Book!
Review: I absolutely loved The Wager. As my headline suggests, I consider this to be a BigDog book. What constitutes a "BigDog" book? It has to be the right combination of Information, Amusement and Never Being Able to Put it Down. David Grann did all three at a very high level. I think I love this guy, David Grann. He must have worked so damn hard on this book. The amount of scribbles and scrabbles he was probably trying to decipher from these dumb 250 year old ship logs! It must have been so tedious.But Grann did it. He went to work and researched the tits out of this story. And sure, there are certainly holes he must have approached in the story and realized that he would have to creatively fill those in. That, in my opinion, is to be expected. Not only did Grann fill those holes, he did it expertly and seamlessly. Do YOU know why we have the phrase "3 Sheets To the Wind" as a euphemism for being drunk? Well, throughout this history of the British man-o-wars, David Grann teaches you that there's more to being a shipman than knowing a few knots & phrases. It takes guts and sometimes, even honor.I won't spoil the story for you here. I believe the Amazon description above gives you even too much information and "spoils" as the kids say. Speaking of kids, my 14 year old son was watching me devour this book. He was the only one in my family willing to listen to the new things I'd learned about man-o-wars or ancient tribes while we all gathered at the dinner table. "Did you know that the British Navy could just roll up on homies who had abandoned their ships and pretended to be dead so they didn't have to go back to sea? They called these guys 'Press Gangs.'" Only my 14 year old would chirp up and say something positive like, "That's awesome, dad!" Or "Do you think you could be a seaman, dad?" What a nice boy.One day while I was cranking through the part of the book near the end that is sort of the political intrigue portion, my son said "David Grann.""What?" I asked."David Grann. The author." My son was staring at the book jacket cover. "I bet he's a real G."I motioned for the kid to come over and when he sat next to me I said, "A G? You better believe Grann is a G because he did all this freakin' research to make this book come to life. If that's not bein' a G, then I don't know what else is. Plus, take a look at this picture of him inside the book jacket!"He leaned in and looked at this picture of the most G-lookin dude of all time. David Grann, standing there with a polo shirt and jacket on top. Not really smiling, not really frowning. Just a look of a confident son of a bitch. My son was right: Grann is a real G. We looked at the picture and then my son read the little bio below, which is just his bonafides in the literary sense. We would have preferred David give us a little bit more personal stuff. For example, his favorite pizza topping would be a good choice to include. What about HIS favorite books instead of a list of books he wrote? I get it... his publisher only wants to pimp his books instead of other authors'. Still, give me a little flavor with Grann.Under his bio, there is his social media and website listed. Only his Twitter and Facebook handle. No instagram. I found that strange. You'd think there'd be a Wager Instagram handle at least! When I finished the book, I wanted to shout it out on my Instagram Story and let everyone know that David Grann is a G and he wrote a BigDog book. To my surprise, I found that Grann DID have an instagram page! I was shocked. Did one of his kids shame him into doing this? His publisher maybe? Regardless, my dude only has like 8 or 9 posts! And it's just pictures of the hardcopy of The Wager stacked on top of each other. I tagged this sad Instagram account to my hype Story about the book anyway. I thought it couldn't do harm.I recommend this book mightily if you couldn't tell.

Reviewer: Ricardo Carvalho de Barros
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Ótimo livro, daqueles que você não consegue desgrudar.

Reviewer: saga
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Nothing not to like! Fast-moving for an historical story, well written, and hard to put down. Didn't give any print errors and the page weights are thick, work a great cover and art included.

Reviewer: Angela
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Lo compre para mi papá de navidad. Le encanto el libro, es muy buen regalo. Y viene todo bien en relación a las páginas y sin daños.

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I just fell into this account, staying up way too late, turning the pages. I had to find out what happened next, but there were also occasions when I was so horrified I thought I couldn’t read on. I had no idea an account of a naval voyage could be so gripping. What these men endured is almost unspeakable. The author draws the various characters so well that they emerge distinctly from the narrative, reaching into my imagination almost 300 years later. Masterwork

Reviewer: Kim P
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I am not a history buff, nor am I usually interested in anything about the Navy, but this book pulled me in right away! It was incredibly interesting, exciting, and well researched. I read the book in just a few days. I couldn't put it down... I had to find out what happened next!I got to know the characters and felt like I was along for their extraordinary tough and scary experience! This is a Must Read!