BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.2.3.1//EN TZID:America/Chicago X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/Chicago BEGIN:VEVENT UID:746@riponlibrary.org DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20240325T183000 DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20240325T193000 DTSTAMP:20240209T214345Z URL:https://riponlibrary.org/events/book-discussion-group-the-wager/ SUMMARY:BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP | The Wager DESCRIPTION:Join the library book discussion of The Wager by author David G rann on Monday\, March 25th at 6:30 PM! Copies of the book are available t o check out at the library while supplies last.\nZoom link: \nMeeting ID: 810 4978 7615\nPasscode: BookClub8\n\n\n\n\nThe Wager by David Grann\nOn January 28\, 1742\, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men\, bare ly 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 Englan d 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 c oast of Patagonia. The men\, after being marooned for months and facing st arvation\, 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.\nBut then ... six months later\, another\, even more decrepit c raft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaway s\, 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 o fficer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy\, with warring factions fighting for dom inion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder f lew\, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death—for whomever the court found g uilty could hang.\nThe Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extr emes 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’Br ian\, his portrayal of the castaways’ desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance\, and his account of t he court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with G rann’s work\, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spe llbound.--Amazon\n \;\n\n\n\n END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Chicago X-LIC-LOCATION:America/Chicago BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20240310T030000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0600 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:CDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR