Reading

David Grann’s book, The Wager – A Tale of Shipwreck, Murder and Mutiny, published in 2025 is a 406 page non-fiction masterpiece.

What I admire about narrative non-fiction writers is their ability to give the reader enough detail to appreciate what the main characters experience, but not so much that the pace of the story is diminished. Throughout The Wager David Grann draws the reader in with a page-turning drama, while at the same time providing an education about the lives of the British sailors who served on men-of-war.

It’s impossible for modern landlubbers to fully understand what it was like for sailors to climb masts, hanging onto dear life while the wind howled and waves crashed over the decks, but Grann does an excellent job giving the reader a sense of that terrifying experience. The drama unfolds as crewmembers die of scurvy, aboard all the ships in the original group, while the vessels are pounded by unrelenting storms.

When The Wager is separated from the rest of the fleet, the ship crashes on a rocky shoreline. The survivors find themselves on an island with very little food, surviving mainly on what provisions they can salvage from the wreck. Unlike today, no one is inspecting satellite images to try and find them and since this is before the telegraph, the chances of being able to make contact with the outside world is basically non-existent.

David Cheap, the Wager’s Captain, is determined to maintain order, but many of the sailors are driven to extremes by starvation. At one point Cheap is so frustrated by men stealing from their meager food rations, that he shoots one of them in the head. Now he faces possible execution for murder, if they ever return to England. Later, a group of men lead by the Wager’s Gunner, John Bulkeley leave the island using three of Wager’s smaller vessels, Bulkeley refusing to follow a route suggested by Captain Cheap. Although they claim it was necessary to leave Cheap because of his erratic behavior, they still risked being executed for mutiny because they abandoned their Captain.

The story continues, with Bulkely’s crew fighting the raging sea, only this time in smaller vessels. Miraculously some of Bulkeley’s group do survive, helped by indigenous peoples, but they end up being prisoners of Spain, which was at war with England at the time.

Eventually, Bulkeley and some of the sailors with him make it back to England, where they must face an inquiry to determine if they have broken naval codes of conduct. And then, when it appears only their account will be heard, Captain Cheap, who they believed dead, returns. He was also helped by indigenous peoples to survive. And finally, just to make things even more interesting, sailors and marines who Bulkeley had left abandoned on an island during their voyage, also return to England.

David Grann has written an amazing account with men struggling not only against the elements, but also with their consciences. Men like Bulkeley had to choose between loyalty to their Captain, or the lives of their crewmates. At the same time, Captain Cheap honestly believed their only hope was to strictly adhere to the rules of conduct, or their small colony would break down into chaos, which it did.

If you enjoy a tale of life of death battles against the elements, with constant twists and turns, you’ll thoroughly enjoy The Wager. The story is told from the perspective of young sailors and wizened old sea dogs and it draws you in from page one. Two of David Grann’s books have already been made into movies, The Lost City of Z (2016) and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023.) I hope The Wager will be the next.

In this post, I would like to be your literary Sommelier and offer you a tasteful book/movie pairing. Both offerings are from 2019, an excellent year, and concern the creation and influence if the iconic media company Netflix.

My first suggestion is the memoire, That Will Never Work by Marc Randolph. What I really appreciate about Randolph’s writing, is the way he describes how success was achieved at Netflix through hard work and innovation, without it becoming a mutual admiration society. He doesn’t try to make anyone, including himself, seem like some godlike, flawless, all knowing genius. Instead, he gives credit where credit is do, and acknowledges failures as he describes how much effort was required to stay the course in the early years of the company’s development. Although it’s a memoire, it is as enjoyable and enlightening as non-fiction narrative works by Ben Mezrich, Stephan Talty and Erik Larson.

Although it isn’t an adaptation of Randolph’s book, the documentary film Neflix vs The World directed by Shawn Cauthern and written by Gina Keeting is an excellent pairing. As well as describing the company’s early years, Netflix vs The World goes on to explain the epic battle between Netflix and Blockbuster for the video rental market and how it came to a surprising conclusion. If you’re old enough to remember renting VHS tapes at a video store, this documentary will offer you a clear explanation of why the industry has changed so dramatically. The mix of interviews, news reports and television commercials over that time is both entertaining as nostalgia and informative as history.

The real significance for writers, however, is served up in the latter segments of Netflix vs. The World as it describes Netflix’s foray into producing original material and how that has influenced other streaming services to start their own productions. If you’re a screenwriter, the market for your work has just expanded. And since short stories, plays for live theatre, and novels are adapted for feature films, it has the potential to impact all writers. That Will Never Work and Netflix vs. The World remind us how fast the media landscape can change, and writers like you and I need to be paying attention and be ready take advantage of those changes.

J. Paul Cooper, Writer

BooK Review: The Wager-A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

An Excellent Pairing