The History of Mutiny

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I end the book with another mutiny, a real mutiny. It's witnessed by a few of the castaways from the way you are on board a ship going back to Europe. On board that ship were several members of an indigenous group from South America that had been forced into slavery and slave by the Spanish. They're outnumbered by hundreds on that ship. And through desperation and unbelievable courage and bravery, they managed to seize control of the ship.

David Grann is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His new book is The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.

“I became very haunted by the stories that [nations] don't tell. Nations and empires preserve their powers not only by the stories they tell, but also by the stories they leave out. … Early in my career, if I came across the silences in a story, I might not have highlighted them, because I thought, Well, there's nothing to tell there. And now I try to let the silences speak.”

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