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Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne

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One not-small benefit of working at a library trucks with it a problem, and it can be stated the same way for both: a sizable reading list. Zero sympathy is expected, of course. As the saying goes, that’s like complaining that your shoes made out of gold are a touch too tight. Nevertheless, the problem remains, especially since this space is most often used to review new books. So what is to be done? In this instance, you just go ahead and pick up a title published 15 years ago,Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne (not to be confused with Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann).

As with his latest book, His Majesty’s Airship, Gwynne excels in conveying both social and political history with a compelling narrative. It helps, of course, that he chooses historical periods abounding with intrigue. Here, we’re taken back to the nineteenth century in what is now Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma. It was ruled by the Comanches, and the land was known as the Comancheria.   Gwynne notes that given how rapidly the eastern agrarian tribes were subdued and relocated, the thought of Indian resistance west of the Mississippi River was not fully appreciated. The Plains Indians, also known as horse Indians, were war machines who—long before white settlers began moving en masse from the east—made war with each other. In addition to the Comanches, there were—to name a few—the Sioux, the Cheyenne, and the Apaches.

What made them so fearsome was something the Spanish inadvertently gave them: the horse. And it was an aggrieved band of people that migrated out of Wyoming who used horses most expertly, a group believed to have once been Shoshone. They would become the Comanches, and apparently they held grudges like no other. Anyone these nomads came across were subjected to absolute terror. Torture killings were common among other Plains Indians, but even the other tribes feared the Comanches.

Reading about such torture is difficult to process. We want to sort out the “why?” concerning this level of viciousness. Was the reputation the point, a cruelty that preceded them, thus clearing their path to more favorable hunting grounds? Even if that was a contributing reason, it was more than that. It’s almost as if Gwynne knows that the reader is jumping back a little, for he explains that fifth century Romans saw the Celts in much the same way. They couldn’t work out their world. The Comanches believed in many spirits. But, writes Gwynne, “there was no ultimate good and evil: just actions and consequences; injuries and damages due.” (Of course we know that whites often saw the Indians as nothing more than savages, which spurred their own orchestrated brutalities.)

As the Comanches bedeviled all comers (the Spanish and then the Mexicans), they faced their own growing peculiar problem: the Texan. Land grants are powerful enticements. And the Mexican government quite often offered them land on what would become Texas. Let these settlers deal with the Comanches, it was thought. Gwynne details a Comanche raid on an early Republic of Texas fort. It was more like a family compound than a fort, which was built too deep in Comanche territory, a reckless act to be sure. The Fort Parker massacre of 1836 was big news at the time, most notably because two children were taken. John Richard Parker would be released years later via negotiation. His sister, Cynthia Ann Parker, disappeared.

This hapless settler existence led to the formation of the Texas Rangers. Gwynne takes us through its early days, and it’s a wild ride. Basically, the Rangers were competent only when they had competent leadership, which was few and far between. One effective leader was John Coffee Hays. He understood that to fight the Comanches, you had to fight like them. He also knew they were predictable in battle to a fault. Add to that the fact that Hays was fearless and the end result was a turning of outcomes. Here’s Hays before a battle, sounding like someone out of an old western movie: “Yonder are the Indians, boys, and yonder are our horses. The Indians are pretty strong. But we can whip them. What do you say?” Well, the boys did follow him, and whip them they did. He understood surprise attacks and that on the plains there was “no expectation of honorable surrender.” The Comanches probably thought he was crazy going into a fight where he was on the wrong side of ten-to-one odds. We do know they had a name for him: Devil Jack.

In addition, Hays utilized the latest in firearm development to level the fight. Comanche warriors using bows and arrows on horseback was an overwhelming force. Hays quickly ordered the newly invented Walker Colt revolvers, which equalized a battle. Given the firearm’s effectives, it’s surprising that once Hays left for California, future iterations of the Rangers didn’t follow his lead. Even when Texas became part of the United States, the U.S. Army was slow in evolving away from the pomp of European battlefield plumage that in no way suited Indian warfare.

The Civil War meant the “Indian problem” would have to wait. The Comanches raids continued and the various tribes settled old scores with each other. It was a strange time where horse Indians raided Oklahoma reservations, where it was not unusual to see a reservation Indian owning a Black slave.

It was also during this time when Cynthia Ann Parker was found. But far from having experienced decades of torment, she had become one of the wives to a Comanche chief. She was found in the aftermath of a battle between her Comanche band and the Texas Rangers, a fight that ended with her husband being killed. Captured with her infant daughter, but separated from her two sons, she could no longer speak English. Not that she would acknowledge her captures anyway. It wasn’t until she was asked if she was Cynthia Ann Parker, that she stood, patted her chest, and said, “Me Cincee Ann.” She and her daughter were not allowed to return to the tribe. Bereft over the loss of her husband and the separation from her sons, she tried to escape many times. In her early days of captivity, she was even tied up and made to sit in what amounted to a freak show, where passersby would gawk at the “white squaw.” She would never see her sons again.

With the conclusion of the Civil War, the same men who fought in it were now the ones holding political office. Having witnessed great carnage during the war, they had little patience with the remaining Plains Indians. Disease and white buffalo hunters had already dwindled their ranks. With succinctness, Gwynne says, “There was no such thing as a horse Indian without a buffalo herd. Such an Indian had no identity at all.”

In 1867, representatives from a U.S. peace commission, which included General William Tecumseh Sherman, and representatives from various tribes met in an area just south of Wichita, Kansas. This was it, and the Indians knew it. They would no longer be free Indians. What remained of Comancheria was no longer theirs. Sherman told them there was nothing they could do about it, saying, “You can no more stop this than you can stop the sun or the moon.”

Not all entered the reservation. Some bands still roamed free. But by 1874, the U.S. government would no longer tolerate Indians who raided and killed. The U.S. Army cornered these remaining Indians in the Texas panhandle. And with the assistance of .50 caliber rifles—also called “the big fifties”—the Texas-Indian Wars came to an end. One Comanche warrior who surrendered was Quanah Parker, one of Cynthia Ann Parker’s sons.

Quanah, once a warrior who gave white Americans no quarter (especially Texans), actually had been advocating peace within his band before surrender. Once on the reservation, he adapted fairly well, even becoming friends with the Army officer who commanded the effort to force the Comanches to surrender. This was the new reality, so he embraced it. Whereas most Comanches found the notion of private property alien, Quanah realized this was the new way. His letterhead identified him as a Comanche chief and he relished the attention he received. He met with Theodore Roosevelt and happily appeared before crowds in headdress and buckskins, often beginning his speeches with a “ladies and gentlemen” salutation.

Gwynne’s writing style possesses an energy that almost dares you to put the book down. And thankfully he doesn’t make sweeping normative judgments about what transpired. Quanah’s embracing his new reality is not presented as some sort of lodestar of achievement that other Indians were meant to follow. Gwynne notes that, unlike Geronimo, Quanah’s standing among his tribe remained throughout his life. Perhaps it’s because his existence was an unusual one from the start. When his father was killed and his mother taken, he was treated poorly within his Comanche band because he was half white. Not until he distinguished himself as a warrior did he re-elevate his status. The man who once killed many a Texan would go on to adopt two white boys, one he found working at a circus in San Antonio. He reconnected with his extended Parker relatives, and two of his daughters married white men. To Gwynne, Quanah’s optimism is impressive, especially since he once lived a life of freedom on the plains. There’s even some optimism on his gravestone:
Resting here until day breaks
And shadows fall
And darkness disappears
Is Quanah Parker, the last chief of the Comanches

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Review by Jason Sullivan

 

Lazarus Man by Richard Price

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If you’ve watched HBO’s The Wire, then you’re familiar with Richard Price. As one of the show’s writers, his story lines were like urban sociological studies. Price’s novels, such as Clockers, Lush Life, and Samaritan, also display the constant pressure-cooker environment within high-density neighborhoods. Plus they are just flat-out fun to read, as is his latest novel, Lazarus Man. For example, if you’re amused when coming across a random character being described not merely as “thin,” but as “thin as a home-rolled reefer,” then Price might be for you.

Make no mistake, Price’s work has depth, often finding its way into university course catalogs. Still, we read novels not for outright edification. It’s the story and characters that earn our attention. And Price always delivers on that front, replete with his trademark snappy dialogue. Where Lazarus Man moves a little differently is how the novel unfurls. There’s an initial event, and then we just follow four main characters as they carry on. It’s not unlike Robert Altman’s film Short Cuts, where we shadow characters just out living their lives. In Lazarus Man, it’s not 1990s Los Angelinos we’re tailing, but four East Harlemites in 2008. Maybe their paths will cross. Or maybe they won’t. Regardless, it’s their proverbial journeys we’re joining.

The anchor character is Anthony. He’s forty-two, unemployed, well on his way to a divorce, and attempting to kick a cocaine habit by trying out every bar on Lenox Avenue. Like some “80-proof Goldilocks,” he’s seeking the one bar that’s just right.

Then comes the event that sends the novel on its way: a tenement building collapses. Nearby, Royal, a down on his luck, third-generation mortician—who pretty much loathes his job—dozes in one of his unsold coffins. In order to make some extra cash, he’s playing the corpse as a group of film students shoot a horror film in his parlor. The sound of the building’s collapse sends Royal bolt-upright in his casket, properly freaking out the film students. Royal then has his young son put on an ill-fitting suit and go out into the chaos to hand out mortuary business cards.

Felix is a taciturn 20-something photographer who moved into the city from upstate. He grabs a camera and gets to work around the wreckage. Emergency personnel arrive as both survivors and nearby neighbors mill about, the “ash-coated” and the unscathed roaming together. The neighborhood becomes like some sort of “hallucinating block party.”

Mary, a beleaguered detective, is charged with finding out if an unaccounted for man is either somewhere in the rubble or is passively trying not to be found. A few years earlier, a freak elevator accident almost killed Mary. The event seems to have rattled her enough that she’s leaned back from most human relationships. It’s not that she doesn’t care. It’s more that she cares too much.

A victim of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, no one thinks to look for Anthony in the debris. When he’s eventually unearthed, he becomes a minor local celebrity, called upon to speak at various community events. He’s good at it, providing an outlet for pent-up community grief that goes beyond a collapsed building. The real question is whether Anthony believes what he’s saying.

Anthony’s mother was Black and his father white. Both are recently deceased, with Anthony now living in their apartment. Anthony’s long spiral began when he was kicked out of Columbia University for selling drugs. Someone suggested that he claim the university singled him out because of his race, but Anthony wanted no part of it. He knew that wasn’t the reason. Besides, his father was constantly charging racial discrimination on behalf of the Black community. Sometimes he was correct, yet at other times he wasn’t even close. Either way, he was always making a public scene about it. In many ways, Anthony wanted the same thing as his Black neighbors: for his father to shut up and mind his own business.

There is a surprise development at the end of the novel, underscoring the epistemological breakdown that fact and truth cannot be used interchangeably. Throughout, all the characters strive to do the decent thing in a difficult world. A good example is a mother who shows up to a community event to complain about how the cops harass some of the neighborhood teenagers. When a police officer at the meeting points out that her son often hangs around known gang members, the mother says that fact doesn’t mean he’s doing anything wrong. She continues, “You live in a certain place you got to be crewed up to not be a target. It’s a negotiated life.”

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Review by Jason Sullivan

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

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It’s little wonder that Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake made it onto numerous “Best Books of 2024” lists. Through the voice of Sadie Smith, a mercenary spy, we’re told of her infiltration into a farming commune in southwestern France. As with Sadie’s real name, her employer is unknown. But it’s clear that clandestine corporate interests view this commune as a major threat to large-scale agribusiness expansions. Regardless, it’s not the spy craft that elevated this novel to critical acclaim. It’s the uniqueness and depth of Kushner’s writing. Kushner primarily delves into two characters, taking us inward and—at times—back tens of thousands of years.

We know this much about Sadie: she’s 34, a Berkeley PhD dropout in rhetoric, and a former (fired) FBI agent. She’s also quite the user of people. To be fair, a spy is a user by trade. But it feels different with Sadie. It’s as though she disdains the subjects she manipulates simply because they are so easily manipulated. Sadie feels little remorse, for she believes most people are poseurs of some sort when they adopt their own respective identities. “People can sometimes pretend so thoroughly that they forget they are pretending. At which point, it could even be said that they are no longer pretending.” In this instance, the group Sadie pretends to join is known as the Moulinards.

Sadie’s contacts point her to a Parisian (Lucien) who is old friends with an influential commune leader. Within a matter of months, Sadie and Lucien are living together, moving her closer to the commune. It’s yet another easy exploitation, for she already knew Lucien “believed he deserved to fall in love.” At the same time, she accesses the email account of the Moulinards’ spiritual leader, Bruno Lacombe.

For a cult to exist, it must orbit an individual who alone possesses “the truth.” As with many cult leaders, Bruno rejects civilization, known among the activist communities as an “anti-civver.” Bruno in fact doesn’t even live with the Moulinards. He spends most of his time in a cave, worshiping a failed species: the Neanderthals, or Thals, as Bruno calls them. Ostensibly, Bruno steps out of the dark long enough to occasionally use his daughter’s computer, sending missives to the group on what he’s gleaned down in the deep.

Bruno laments the world that was lost when the Neanderthals went extinct. Because we know—and live—how the human drama is playing out, the Neanderthal world is a tabula rasa for Bruno, and for anyone who wants to cleanse their mind of commodified images. This deprogramming takes place underground, by the “modalities and visions that darkness” promises.

Sound ridiculous? Of course. It’s ready-made to mock. But does Kushner give it depth nevertheless? That she does.

As Sadie winds her way closer to the Moulinards, Kushner not only returns to Bruno’s disquisitions, but to the life traumas that sent him into darkness. After surreptitiously reading Bruno’s emails, Sadie questions whether the commune’s inhabitants actually understand and deserve Bruno’s insights. Such questions are not part of Sadie’s mission, of course. But, then again, you don’t have to be a spy yourself to see that she’s at risk of losing control.

Still, Sadie performs her role well, eliminating potential threats to her mission by offering preemptive threats, as she does to an older French man who questions her identity. Her return threat leaves him looking “dejected and childish, like I had just taken something that belonged to him, and broken it, and handed it back.” However, when traveling by high-speed train through the countryside and becoming startled by the sudden appearance of another high-speed train traveling from the opposite direction, we know it means more than Sadie being startled. A reckoning is afoot.

One early morning, Sadie looks outside and says, “For all its fame, rosy-finger dawn leaves no prints.” We can substitute “Sadie” for “dawn” in that sentence. With Sadie, how long can she keep these disappearing acts up?

There’s piercing intelligence in Kushner’s writing. It’s not just her crackling writing style, where a hill left devoid of trees via logging looks “like the scalp of someone with an autoimmune condition.” Kushner writes Sadie as a scary smart individual who knows there are always sectarians among radicals, where a division can be made that will kill the whole.

It’s clear to Sadie that the existence of a charismatic leader speaks more to what the followers need to believe than what the leader is saying. Taken further, it’s why people are so credulous of the fantastical. Cryptozoology endures because people want to believe that there’s evidence of the unexplained. Why are there still Bigfoot sightings? It’s because people want to believe in Bigfoot. Even Bruno concedes as much.

The questions Bruno elicits within Sadie are more complicated. To be sure, Bruno’s theories at least point to a fossil record. After that, it’s a whole lot of conjecture. But, in the end, we’re not really talking about Neanderthals. To Sadie, it’s like waking up in the middle of the night and confronting your true self. “When people face themselves, alone, the passions they have been busy performing all day, and that they rely on to reassure themselves that they are who they claim to be, to reassure their milieu of the same, those things fall away.” It’s “the four a.m. reality of being.”

It’s fitting that Bruno exists only to Sadie through his writing and that he doesn’t even know of her existence. When orchestrated events arrive and things become tense with the Moulinards, Sadie—detaching, as always—says to herself, “You people are not real to me. No one is.” This could have been just as easily said by Bruno. In many ways, it’s time for Sadie to step into her own metaphorical cave.

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Review by Jason Sullivan

The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir by Griffin Dunne

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The celebrity memoir. The decision to read one is subject to a big-time conditional: the celebrity in question. Fairly obvious condition, I know. Until recently, I don’t believe I had read a single celebrity memoir, deeming them somewhat akin to “royal watching,” a waste of one’s fine time. This opinion, however, evidenced my own limited thinking, for I just devoured a celebrity memoir. And it turns out the big-time conditional was that it be written by a celebrity I had never heard of.

While I may not have heard of Griffin Dunne, I certainly knew of his aunt, the late author Joan Didion. She was the hook that led me to giving The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir a go. There she is on the cover, along with other recognizable faces: her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, and his brother—and Griffin’s father—Dominick Dunne. The whole lot of them look sufficiently WASPy. The Dunnes, however, were Catholic. It didn’t matter that Dominick grew up across the street from the Hepburns (both Katherine and Dominick’s respective fathers were noted physicians) in a moneyed Connecticut neighborhood. The Protestant Hepburns didn’t speak to the Catholic Dunnes.

Griffin’s mother, Ellen Griffin, was born to an even wealthier family, and Griffin’s retelling of her family history had me beguiled right from the jump. Griffin and his two siblings also grow up (surprise) quite privileged. There’s still plenty of loss and tragedy along the way, with Dunne writing an affecting account of what transpired. He’s a natural storyteller who does justice to his family, even as he lays it all out there. Still, I’m not ashamed to admit that what had me flying through the pages was the sheer volume of famous names that roll out in story after story.

Dominick grew up enthralled with movies. He also had a natural inclination to be a gadfly around famous people; so it’s not surprising he ended up in the entertainment industry. In New York City, Griffin’s first babysitter was Elizabeth Montgomery. Humphrey Bogart persuaded Dominick to relocate to Hollywood and stage-manage a show, ushering the Dunnes into the Beverly Hills set. Peter Lawford was a next door neighbor. When dining out, it was not unusual to see Jimmy Stewart at one table and Alfred Hitchcock at another.

It’s a reminder that Hollywood is, after all, a business. With Dominick working as a television and film producer, it meant his colleagues were some of the most famous names from the Hollywood of yesteryear. At one pool party, a young and overeager Griffin jumps into the deep end and promptly sinks to the bottom. A hand grabs him and places him at the pool’s edge. “A wee bit early for the deep end, sonny,” says Sean Connery, his rescuer.

But growing up around the entertainment industry also means you behold the reality behind the camera. When Griffin visits the Gilligan’s Island soundstage, he sees Bob Denver—Gilligan himself—fly into a rage over a “last-minute rewrite and upend a watercooler onto the floor.” And it also means that the famous will see you. In the case with the Dunnes, Dominick’s appetite to be around and impress celebrities was clearly too voracious. When entertaining guests, the Dunne children were often called upon to make an appearance before going to bed, the brothers bowing—replete with matching robes— and their sister curtsying. Years later, Dennis Hopper would tell Griffin that it was the saddest thing he ever saw.

Ellen and Dominick’s marriage ultimately failed. His excessive drinking was a contributor. And the fact that he was a closeted homosexual was certainly a factor. He may have been closeted in Hollywood but not to Ellen. As a child, Griffin was unaware of this dynamic within his parent’s marriage. But, looking back, he now understands why instead of receiving the German shepherd he asked for, his father gave him two poodles with pom-pom tails; one of which was named Wilde, after Oscar Wilde.

Griffin was sent to a few boarding schools. His father eventually blew up his career and left California. Griffin describes his brother, Alex, as extremely intelligent but whose only “ambition was to be cleansed of all ambition.” As a young adult, Alex is said to have had “a unique relationship with reality.” If Alex heard a particular song on the radio, he would become quite agitated that the artist hadn’t properly credited his contribution. He would write letters to the offending musician, detailing how he didn’t want royalties, just a simple “thank you.”

It was Dominique, their sister, who was the lodestar of the family. They all adored her. When Griffin and Dominique both began their acting careers, it was pretty much a given that she was the most talented of the two. And as their mother was losing her mobility from the effects of multiple sclerosis, it’s Dominique who did things like “steal” Robin Williams away from a party and have him perform some comedy for a bedridden Ellen.

In 1982, all the male Dunnes were living in New York City. Griffin pursued an acting/producing career as Dominick worked on a novel. Both were trying to keep Alex from sliding into madness. It was also the year they received word that Dominique had been placed on life support after having been strangled by an ex-boyfriend. They fly back to Los Angeles, and it’s beyond wrenching to read of this family reuniting only to take Dominique off life support. When it’s time to say goodbye to his daughter, a distraught Dominick whispers in her ear: “Give me your talent.”

The family attend the murder trial of Dominique’s attacker, and the whole thoroughfare is positively maddening to read about. But it did spur Dominick’s second career as a writer. His journal from the trial was published in Vanity Fair, where he would continue as a contributor.

Griffin seemingly had a good relationship with his aunt, Joan Didion. Dominique’s murder certainly put a strain on family relations, however. Didion’s literary reputation undoubtedly gave Griffin some reputational cachet in turn. As an example, when Griffin was a struggling actor, he took a bartending job at a private dinner party where he ended up being harassed by Tennessee Williams. When the hostess informed Williams that he was harassing Joan Didion’s nephew, a startled Williams immediately apologized. (Griffin writes that he didn’t really mind the harassment.)

Excluding Alex, most of the people in this outstanding memoir are gone now, including Carrie Fisher. She and Griffin met as teenagers and became best friends. Fisher absolutely comes across as a blast to hang out with, just flat-out cool and witty. Once, she called Griffin to complain that the film she was shooting was going to be a disaster. “I’m acting with an eight-foot yeti and a four-foot Brit in a rolling trash can.” When Griffin says that he doesn’t understand the movie’s title, Carrie responds, “Two words: ‘Star’ and then ‘Wars.’ Put’em together and still doesn’t make any sense.”

Oh, and Frank Sinatra once paid a maître d’ fifty dollars to slap Dominick across the face.

This book has it all.

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Review by Jason Sullivan

The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis by George Stephanopoulos

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We arrive, fellow citizens, at the fleeting moments of a presidential campaign. Soon (hopefully) we’ll know whether it’s Kamala Harris or Donald Trump who will become the next commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces. Of all the enumerated powers under Article II of the U.S. Constitution, “commander in chief” is probably the weightiest. It’s definitely a 24/7 gig. To assist with decision-making, a vast array of national security information is available to each president. And most of it emanates from one centralized location: the White House’s Situation Room.

In The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis by George Stephanopoulos, we learn not only of the Situation Room’s inception (there is actually more than one room) but also of how its use is a commentary on a president’s management style. Stephanopoulos notes that the Situation Room (or Sit Room) has been called “the best filter in the world” and the “most important crisis management center in the entire world.” He does capital work introducing the apolitical Sit Room duty officers who staff and diligently serve each president, regardless of political party affiliation. But what makes this book really pop are the high-level interviews and stories from the archives. Even if you have a broad understanding of the events presented in this book, I posit you will still find many details in those events just flat-out wild and alarming.

The Bay of Pigs debacle was the impetus to create the Situation Room. President Kennedy wanted a centralized location in the West Wing that would hasten direct access to sensitive information. The actual physical space was utilitarian, having “all the charm of a cardboard box.” When Stephanopoulos arrived as a White House staffer in the Clinton administration, conditions apparently had not improved much. When he first saw the Sit Room, his first thought was “underwhelming.” It didn’t resemble the sleek movie depictions that go all the way back to the war room in Dr. Strangelove. (Stephanopoulos does take us through the more recent modernizations.)

President Johnson, bedeviled with the conflict in Vietnam, was a constant visitor to the Sit Room. Ever the micromanager, he would constantly call down to the duty officers. It was not uncommon for Johnson to ring the Sit Room in the middle of the night to inquire if there were any new developments coming out of Vietnam. He desperately wanted some piece of information that might take the U.S. out of what he privately remarked was a hopeless endeavor.

Full of self-pity and feeling persecuted from the Watergate scandal, President Nixon had all but retired to the White House residence where he would start drinking early in the day. As a result, Nixon was often too drunk to make immediate decisions. This created a power vacuum that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was more than happy to fill. Famously known as a realpolitik operator, Kissinger was quick to argue the value of the world viewing the United States as a “trigger-happy” military power. Other national security staff often pushed back, arguing that such force was not always a net positive. And—half a world away—it turns out that Nixon’s counterpart, Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, was also often too drunk to make decisions.

We read how President Carter used a psychic to try and locate the U.S. hostages being held in Iran. When Carter gives the order for a military rescue of the hostages (which failed miserably), Stephanopoulos is excellent in its retelling. The same is true when detailing President Obama’s order to send a Navy SEAL team into Pakistan for Osama bin Laden. Stephanopoulos places the reader right in the Sit Room, and it’s riveting.

In 1981, President Reagan was shot and rushed to a hospital. Thanks to National Security Advisor Richard Allen placing a tape recorder on the Sit Room conference table, we know how various aides and cabinet officials decided to handle the dilemma. And it’s rather shocking. During these tense moments, Vice President Bush was en route to Washington D.C. from Texas. There was a communication problem on his plane, rendering him unreachable. The transcript of the tape recording reads almost like a tragicomedy. Constitutionally, none of the men in that room were in control of the executive branch. But that didn’t stop Secretary of State Al Haig from going to the press and declaring, “As of now, I’m in control here.” Later, Allen would reply that it was an “imminently stupid” thing for Haig to say.

President George H.W. Bush appears both knowledgeable and unfailingly polite. He often invited Sit Room staff to watch movies in the White House’s theater room. A former Sit Room secretary recounts how on one Saturday morning she picked up the phone to hear President Bush actually asking for permission to enter the Sit Room. “This is the president. May I come in?”

He was also shrewd in dealing with military generals who often had their own agendas. This power play with military brass was something Secretary of State Madeleine Albright experienced in the Clinton administration. And the fact that she was the first woman to hold her position meant that it was decidedly a new experience for the generals as well.

Throughout the book, history is threaded together by those who served under multiple presidents. For instance, John Bolton assumed “high-level positions under presidents Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43 and Trump.” Regarding Bush 43, Bolton notes that the president knew he had much to learn, so “he learned it.” Bolton doesn’t have the same take on President Trump: “He had no idea what the issues were. He never learned anything.” This observance is underscored by Trump asking if Puerto Rico—where the inhabitants are U.S. citizens—could be traded for Greenland.

Ultimately, this book is a homage to the resolute Sit Room duty officers. Career government employees are often much maligned. However, as Stephanopoulos describes, these are the people who stayed at their White House posts during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. They ignored evacuation orders so that they could do their work. They are the ones who must decide when to move information up the chain of command, knowing that a misstep could cost lives. They also understand that for a democracy to endure there must be a continuity of government among presidents. They serve in the same spirit as President Kennedy’s call to service, a “commitment to others” that rises above one’s own self-interest.

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Review by Jason Sullivan

A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko

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Have you ever thought about hopping into the Grand Canyon and hiking its entire length? Neither have I. Not only did Kevin Fedarko, author of A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon, think about it, he actually did it. The subtitle of this compelling and thoughtful book very well could have been penned before the actual hike began. For how could an 800-mile trek by someone who is spectacularly unprepared be anything but a misadventure?

Fedarko made the excursion with photographer Pete McBride, his friend and sometimes nemesis (they bicker a lot). It’s not as though the duo were tenderfoots. Over the years, they have teamed up on numerous global adventures that became stories for publication. And prior to that, Fedarko spent many a summer within the canyon as a whitewater boatman for a Colorado River rafting company. Sounds impressive enough. However, he writes it as a marker of his inadequacies. The goal was to be a guide with a boat full of paying guests, not a boatman hauling supplies at the tail end of a rafting convoy. The fact that he was never good enough to be entrusted with piloting other humans down the river was “soul crushing.”

Over five million people a year visit the Grand Canyon. Most peer over the rim; some hike its trails or raft the Colorado. But there have been only a few dozen that we know of who have hiked its entirety. There’s no guidebook for this, of course. Such is the allure for dedicated thru-hikers who must rely on each other, from sharing route information to dropping in caches of supplies when a set of comrades are on the epic hike.

Obviously, this is not something novices just jump into. Enter Fedarko and McBride, two novices who do exactly that. They do have access to a small group of experts who will guide them. Again, they are not exactly just off-the-couch blokes. With this hike, however, they are not prepared. Not only is their gear all wrong, they are—most egregiously—commencing the hike with a “no problem” attitude.

Fedarko’s writing brings the wonders of the canyon to the reader. There are mile-deep walls where “nearly 40 percent of the planet’s chronology was etched directly into the stone.” It’s a place that has both tundra and desert conditions, where streams are almost sentient, retreating from the scorching sun and reemerging at night.

And, without a doubt, the canyon can be deadly. Aside from the dramatic cliffs that claim both casual tourists and experienced hikers alike, there’s the grinding heat. Ultimately, this is what ends Fedarko and McBride’s first attempt. Every day is a slog, notwithstanding the most breath-taking scenery imaginable. Fedarko’s feet are wrecked from all the sand that’s worked its way in. (He forgot to pack gaiters. McBride said it was for the best as he thinks wearing gaiters look goofy.) He quotes what another hiker said of such interminable days: “that hell might well consist of hiking like this for eternity.” McBride eventually experiences “water intoxication.” He’s drinking enough water, but he’s not taking in the requisite amount of electrolytes. His muscles seize and contort to the point where it looks as though there’s another living entity inside him trying to escape. It then becomes a race to escape the canyon before certain death.

Humiliated, they initially conclude that there’s no way they should try this again. But much to their surprise, another set of experienced hikers immediately reach out to educate (and scold) them. Fedarko and McBride had already learned the hard way that they just couldn’t mule their way through. They needed to (surprise) meticulously plan, become obsessive in weighing their gear so as to not schlep more than their daily exertion levels can manage.

Properly humbled, they return to the canyon with this new group of experts. The duo persevere, even tackling some segments of the canyon by themselves. At times it’s hard not to be envious of their experiences: dropping into cavernous slot canyons that very few people (if any) have explored; walking by the numerous artifacts and pictographs from prehistoric peoples; stargazing into a night sky that’s without a trace of light pollution and experiencing what astronomers call “celestial vaulting.” But then there are the recounted days where you think, “Nah, I’m good.” There are many weeks where the only water sources are various muddy potholes, some with such small apertures that the water must be extracted with a syringe. Then there are the snow-covered catwalks where one wrong step will send you to your death. And if you’re in the wrong place when a flash flood appears, forget it, you’re dead.

On the final leg of the hike, their guide made sure to take them through “Helicopter Alley.” At the western end of the canyon, helicopters ferry tourists up to the rim where they disembark for a few minutes (take a few selfies); and then they clamber aboard again, roaring back down the canyon. It’s nonstop and maddeningly loud. This, their guide tells them, is why he and the others agreed to lead these two on a thru-hike. A story about the canyon’s splendors must also include the commercial threats that undermine the canyon’s grandeur.

Towards the end of hike, McBride confesses to Fedarko that he believes he’s wasted his time snapping pictures along the way; for they can’t capture what’s probably the most powerful feature of the canyon: the quiet. I understand the sentiment. What makes the Southwest so enthralling is not just the landscape that changes hues throughout the day, but also the quiet that seems to emanate from it. It’s transcendent.

Fedarko grew up in the industrial regions of Pennsylvania, where chemical emissions poisoned both workers and residents. When he was a boy, his father gave him a copy of Colin Fletcher’s account of thru-hiking the Grand Canyon. So the Grand Canyon was—and is—the other much needed counterweight to having our way with the land. It’s both a message and a gift to future generations: There are some wild places that should remain just as they are because what they offer is already more than enough. While very few will ever undertake such a trek as Fedarko made, they should at least have the opportunity to do so and experience the same quiet and wonder.

At hike’s end, Fedarko renters the park’s trails, where people are simply walking and smiling, completely oblivious to what he has accomplished. It’s a simple yet powerful pleasure. They, too, are enjoying a walk in the park.

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Reviewed by Jason Sullivan

Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present by Fareed Zakaria

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If you’re still on the prowl for this summer’s beach read, Fareed Zakaria has your back with his latest book, Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present. It’s a book for those with, shall we say, divergent beach-reading preferences. Using his Harvard-trained political scientist background along with his current role as a CNN political commentator, Zakaria expertly combines both breadth and accessibility to lay out how studying five centuries of revolutions can add context to our current challenges.

This was an ambitious project, to be sure. Zakaria’s targeted audience here is wide, including both the Foreign Affairs reader and the more casual news consumer. To start, Zakaria contends that liberal democratic capitalism has been a basic good. We’re looking at classical liberalism, where democracies are not about outcomes, but norms: rule of law, individual and economic freedom, checked power. The revolutions he explores fall under a fairly traditional social science definition. They are revolutions that embodied profound structural changes: social, political, and economic. Zakaria excludes the American Revolution as it was more or less a civil war among Englishmen. After American independence, life in the former colonies looked pretty much as it had before. The Founders certainly did much to further Enlightenment thinking regarding liberalism, nevertheless, as evidenced in the Federalist Papers.

Zakaria credits the Dutch with the building of liberalism’s foundation. They rejected absolute monarchy and promoted free trade. Separating themselves from the Hapsburg Empire, a national identity was established. To themselves, they were the Dutch, distinct and unique. In 1688, the Glorious Revolution—in which a Dutchman and his wife, William and Mary, were invited to assume the English throne—solidified Parliament as the ruling power of England. In other words, a social contract was made. According to Zakaria, “the moment Dutch commercialism was wedded to English power can be seen as the moment the medieval world came to a close.”

Any discussion of revolutions must include the quintessence of failed revolutions: the French Revolution. Given the calcified state of French society in 1789, Zakaria notes that there was an early liberal movement during the nascent stages of the revolution. But when the Reign of Terror commenced, the French republic became, in reality, a dictatorship. The illiberal movements that followed were so seismic, their effects are still with us. Are you a liberal or are you a conservative? Are you a friend of the republic or are you an enemy?

This is why Zakaria’s book title is the plural of revolution. A revolution begets a counter-revolution. The French Revolution undoubtedly rattled Europe, especially within the German states. There was “a ferocious backlash to the cold rationalism of the Enlightenment, and its monstrous child, the revolution.” So, the Right turned to a new movement: Romanticism. Modernity had so shaken the elites, there was a pining for some bygone yesteryear.

The Industrial Revolution is covered along with the 19th century U.S. industrialization boom, what Zakaria calls America’s real revolution. He points out that the British government leveled the same accusations against Americans as today’s American government levels against the Chinese. Ostensibly, such practices as product dumping and intellectual property theft are not new. Nonetheless, massive change spurred massive disruption. The reaction in Europe came in the form of socialism; in the U.S., it was populism.

In the 20th century, liberalism’s greatest threat was communism. Zakaria details how the Washington Consensus encouraged developing countries to privatize and embrace the market economy via free trade. It was seen by President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher as a win-win: good for defeating the Soviets and good for the respective nation. Neoliberalism was so prevalent that when the Tories finally lost in the 1990s, Labour’s new leader, Tony Blair, embraced this globalist view. In fact, when Thatcher was asked to name her greatest achievement, she said, “Tony Blair.” The message was clear. Labour espousing Tory economic practices meant that, to her, the matter had been settled.

After the Soviet Union fell, political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously wrote that the event marked “the end of history.” To Fukuyama, political evolution had reached its highest state. Liberal democracy had, in essence, won. But history wasn’t quite finished, for a democratic backsliding—a move to autocracy—commenced in some countries. This shouldn’t be a surprise, says Zakaria. Market reforms may open a nation, but the foundation of a democratic system takes time to develop. Napoleon may have dismissed England as a “nation of shopkeepers.” But those shopkeepers point to a dynamic nation of staked interests. In other words, there’s a vigorous Parliament precisely because it took centuries to mature.

As the second half of Zakaria’s book moves us to the present, we see continued constructive and disruptive changes by way of modernity. He goes through the numbers, and they are striking. China and India essentially “come online.” Just think of the sheer volume of people now participating in this global economy. Additionally, technological changes continue to disrupt just as much as they contribute. Nothing new here. The printing press played a part in a century of European religious wars. In so many ways, life is now easier and safer. But it’s also more isolating. As a rather benign but consequential example, Amazon.com has replaced your local bookshop.

The “red state vs. blue state” debate is now part of the zeitgeist. But urban vs. rural seems more to the point. We have, more or less, self-sorted ourselves. This is further exacerbated when one siloes news sources. If you so choose, you don’t have to worry about working through any complex national or global issue. You can find plenty of outlets telling you that the answers are simple, and that others are to blame for the problems, always. These are business models disguised as news organizations.

Abroad, the European Union has been an economic success, yet many Europeans feel alienated from its largesse, says Zakaria. Farther east, revanchist Russia is in the throes of its own curious grappling with identity. To add further complexity, we (in the West) tend to think of Enlightenment precepts as universal. But many countries tend to view them as a “legacy of Western dominance.”

Zakaria seems to take a rather sanguine view of our global economic interdependence. He wants the reader to consider the rather long relative peace that’s been in place among the great powers. But, he of course understands the challenges. He quotes Kierkegaard: “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” The book’s epigraph includes a famous Marx and Engels passage from The Communist Manifesto: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned…”

Anxiety and constant change are certainly a part of our modern political economy. In response, there are individuals who claim to be the vanguard of a movement to cure the ills that they have diagnosed, asserting that they are the only ones who can offer stability. Tribalism is often signaled over reality. Historically, followers of such individuals are willing to tolerate (or even advocate) realpolitik actions, thus eschewing institutions and democratic norms. In other words, such actions are illiberal. What happens when illiberal means are used in an attempt to restore some atavistic sense of national strength? Can liberal democracy survive when rules, procedures, and compromise are tossed aside? Perhaps we will see.

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Reviewed by Jason Sullivan

You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue

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Hernán Cortés meeting Moctezuma in 1519 holds some space in our North American imagination. Two trajectories of human development—long separated by time and distance—crossed in Tenochtitlan, modern-day Mexico City. For many, it symbolizes the beginning of the end, the Old World commencing its dominion in the New World. Imagine the meeting: European steel and gunpowder entering the dominant empire in Mesoamerica. We can almost feel the tension five centuries later.

In You Dreamed of Empires, Álvaro Enrigue has a reimagining for the ages. Yes, it foretells the eventual clash between Spanish conquistadors and a sophisticated city. But most of the novel reads like the most awkward of weekend getaways between two groups of people trying to understand what in the blazes is going on. It’s often comedic, taking the reader on a delightful, almost hallucinogenic flight.

We first find Cortés and a few of his men as dinner guests of Moctezuma’s retinue. One conquistador, never having experienced the deliciousness of chocolate, wants to down the frothy cacao drink that was served. However, the Tenochtitlan priest seated next to him—”his teeth filed sharp as a cat’s”—has him more than a little unnerved. More than anything, it’s the nauseating stench of coagulated blood from the priest’s cape made of human skin.

The fact that the Spaniard is not eating his soup is becoming an issue. Moctezuma’s priests are whispering. Cortés shoots the soldier a reproachful look, like a parent silently scolding a child with a flash of the eyes: Eat! The soldier finally imbibes, prompting a comrade to raise his cup of chocolate at his countrymen, as if to say, “Looking good, Spain.”

Moctezuma leaves others to deal with the Spaniards. He’s deep within the palace complex, self-medicating with psychedelic mushrooms. His depressed malaise is crippling. He’s always having to solidify power and find opposing warriors to sacrifice in the temples. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. And it’s not as though the “testy gods” are appreciative, what with their “blithely doling out droughts, earthquakes, defeats, and invasions.” Now, here are these Spaniards, these “bearded ones.” So Moctezuma lies down. “The Silence his nap demanded was imperial.” All things within the palace become hushed. When he wakes, he rings a royal bell, its peal waking “a whole world” just before he returns to sleep.

The conquistadors are left to wander the impressive and disorienting palace complex. With its many canals, one soldier remarks that it’s like Venice. Another responds, “It’s like Venice, but in hell.” The palace is so silent and empty it feels as though they’re “strolling along the seafloor.” Every day is like a Sunday, says another. Meanwhile, the soldier charged with stabling the horses is having some difficulty in finding suitable accommodations. The problem, of course, is that horses are just as new to the area as the Spanish.

Are they guests, or are they prisoners? They don’t know. There is, nevertheless, the feeling that they are getting away with something. Could they ever get this close to the Spanish crown? Of course not. But look at them now, even if they do feel idiotic marching through this heat and humidity in helmets and breastplates. In fact, when comparing their attire with Moctezuma’s warriors’ headdresses representing their guardian animals, the Spanish crested helmets seem “about as majestic now as a bagpiper’s bonnet.”

Tlilpotonqui, the mayor of Tenochtitlan, at times comes across as an overworked concierge. When Moctezuma beacons, go he must. He’s had it up to here with everyone and everything. We can imagine him trying not to get caught rolling his eyes when has to listen to He Who Looses the Rain of Words and Governs the Songs Lest We Be Like the Flowers and Bees That Last But a Few Days sing—once again —the “interminable” Legend of the Suns.

Excessive rumination is not something that burdens Cortés. We know from history that Cortés was positively awful. And he’s dreadful here too. If there is one thing that burns inside Cortés, it’s his quest for gold. It’s purported that Cortés said to Moctezuma’s representatives, “I and my companions suffer from a disease of the heart which can be cured only with gold.”

Eventually, Moctezuma—fully sated on magic mushrooms—emerges. Here he is, the mighty ruler of the “fear-producing machine” that is Tenochtitlan. And what happens? He and one of his priests hear a T.Rex song from the 1970s and start dancing about.

Absurd? Yes, of course. But there’s Borgesian magical realism in play here, especially toward the end of the novel. If that’s not exactly your literary bag, perhaps it may help to know that this novel is rather svelte, coming in at just over 200 pages. And, really, when capturing the peculiarity of this time and place, magical realism offers its own illuminative qualities.

Cortés and his men weren’t the first Spaniards to reach Mesoamerica. It was already known among many Mesoamericans that these “foreigners were ordinary men, but when there were many of them they became terrifying.” So it’s no wonder that in Enrigue’s incantatory novel, he has Moctezuma asking Cortés to just stop, to join him, and to “dream now.” It all “doesn’t last, like flowers.”

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Reviewed by Jason Sullivan

Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead

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In Crook Manifesto, the always excellent Colson Whitehead takes us back to the world he devised in his previous novel, Harlem Shuffle. Ray Carney still has his Harlem furniture store. Becoming more prosperous, he and his family have settled into an apartment on the coveted Strivers’ Row. We’re in the 1970s, where “the flamboyant quotient in Harlem” is high, filled with all sorts of “groovy plumage.”

But the New York of the 1970s is also one of decline, with “the apprehension that things were not as they had been and it would be a long time before they were right again.” In the decade of America’s Bicentennial, this current volatility seems fitting to Carney, where America is both “melting pot and powder keg.” And to Carney, the powder keg is besting any harmonious melting together. When it comes time for him to conjure up his Bicentennial furniture ad for the newspaper, he can’t think of anything jingoistic. He can think only of such cutting things as “200 years but it feels like more–Ask the Indians. This July 4th, Salute Truth, Justice & 3-Position Adjustable Recliners.”

Still, even though Carney tends to “weave private dread into the universal condition,” life is pretty good. He’s no longer a part of the secondary economy, where he helped fence (move) stolen goods. His underworld contacts have stepped back into the shadows, leaving Ray Carney to live the straight-and-narrow life.

That is until his teenage daughter wants tickets to see the Jackson 5 at Madison Square Garden. As any father will tell you, just about anything will be done to avoid disappointing your daughter. So as the concert date approaches, Carney does what he has to do to score tickets to the sold-out show: He steps back into the shadows.

Carney contacts Munson, a white cop who shakes down the neighborhood crooks. He’s a crook with a badge, a streetwise tough from Hell’s Kitchen who long ago realized he could work both sides of the law. He’ll get Carney those tickets, but Carney must go on a ride with him. And what a wild ride it is.

It’s an open question whether Carney was looking for an excuse to re-enter the underworld. Either way, he quickly realizes he’s made a big mistake. “Slip once and everybody is glad to help you slip hard. Crooked stays crooked and bent hates straight.” Munson’s world is collapsing, so he enlists Carney to act as wheelman on one final run of extortions.

Whitehead demonstrates why he’s won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, twice. He could be describing anything and I’m pretty sure I would be regaled. During moments of grand intensity, there’s still some observational levity that underscores the absurdity of what’s transpiring. For example, there’s the old-timer crook who forms perfectly articulated sentences even with an active cigarette affixed in his mouth. “Shakespeare monologues couldn’t budge it.” Soon after this thought, someone is shot three times. And on it goes.

There are quite a few recurring characters from Harlem Shuffle (such as Munson), most notably Pepper, an aging bruiser whose entire adult life has been one heist after another. (Note: Crook Manifesto can be read as a stand-alone novel.) When a blaxploitation shoot is set to be filmed in the neighborhood, Carney sees to it that Pepper works its security. To the taciturn Pepper, “filmmaking was a heist, same animal.” In fact, Pepper sees most human activity through a criminal’s lens. To wit: The men on the street signs didn’t get there “by being decent, that’s for damn sure.”

Whitehead is known for his meticulous research to set a scene. Pick any era, allow Whitehead some time to research it, and he’ll pen a story that will place you right in that period. In 1970s New York City, arson was ubiquitous. The reasons for it are varied, but we already know the drill: debilitated buildings being burned not only for insurance payouts but also for kickbacks to those who will choose just who in fact gets to rebuild them. It was common enough for some tenants to sleep with their shoes on. Then there were the willing arsonists, or “firebugs”—blokes who just wanted to see the world burn.

Pepper can be violent, but the crime he sees now goes beyond the pale. In addition to the wildness of repeated arsons, there’s such things as the mother of four who’s stabbed over a few dollars and a pastrami sandwich, and the Juilliard student who’s pushed onto the subway tracks. To Pepper, “a man has a hierarchy of crime, of what is morally acceptable and what is not, a crook manifesto, and those who subscribe to lesser codes are cockroaches.”

Nonetheless, both Carney and Pepper know that in a “city like this, it behooves you to embrace the… contradictions.” And, really, it’s not as though there was some “good old days of crime” epoch, even though it often feels like it, a wanting for it to be so. Take Alexander Oakes, a rising politician and a childhood friend of Carney’s wife, Elizabeth. Both Alexander and Elizabeth come from the monied Harlem community, with Alexander acting as an interlocutor between the old and new power structures. To Elizabeth’s father, Alexander “would have been his son-in-law if the world made any kind of sense, if Elizabeth had any sense.” Without giving anything away, Carney and Pepper learn how this other set operates, and, once again, it gets fierce.

The world—as it does—changes fast for Carney. His kids are growing, doing their own thing, and on their way to leaving. His wife has her own busy career. Other than an occasional meet-up with Pepper and a few others, he’s essentially a loner, with an uneasy foot in both the crooked and straight worlds. Things come back hard on Carney, leaving him somewhat bewildered and struggling with what he should be thinking about. He’s like the city where he lives. “The city is being tested. It was always being tested and emerging on the other side in a newer, stronger version for having been laid low.”

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Reviewed by Jason Sullivan

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

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Just when you think you’ve already heard the most daring of castaway sea voyages from the historical record, comes now author David Grann to regale us with a remarkable chronicle of woe. In The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, Grann weaves together a myriad of sources, recounting events with such vibrant prose they unfurl before the mind’s eye. These events, however, happened over 280 years ago. As revealed by his previous book, Killers of the Flower Moon, Grann’s talent is not just in narration, but also in finding historical narratives that turn the looking glass back around on us.

Mark Twain purportedly said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” During the 18th century, naval warfare was one such rhyme. In 1740, the Royal Navy dispatched a squadron from Portsmouth on a mission to seize the treasure aboard a Spanish galleon. Grann does capital work in describing the socio-economic profile of the crew, ranging from striving officers to men pressed into service against their will. Aboard these warships, pitiless hierarchy is the name of the game. For a ship to slice through the ocean, each crew member has to work with machine-like precision. Any dereliction is met with the lash—or worse. As we already knew, democratic these ships are not, for any glint of mutiny portends chaos.

On this voyage, typhus takes its toll. Also, as the squadron sails around Cape Horn, scurvy ravages the crew, rendering them near useless. Traversing the Cape’s furious waters is certainly an inauspicious time for a weakened crew. For centuries it bedeviled sailors. Grann notes that those who experienced it “strained to find a fitting name for this watery graveyard”: “Blind Horn’s hate,” “Dead Men’s Road,” or just simply “Terrible.”

Some of the squadron’s ships make it. Some turn back. One ship, a former merchant vessel (an East Indiaman) retrofitted into a warship, decidedly does not make it: the HMS Wager. Grann lays out, with great drama, how the ship runs hard aground just off a Chilean island. Water floods in, rats scurry up from the holds, and those well enough to flee scramble into smaller boats. Then there are those who break into the ship’s store of alcohol and go berserk in a mixture of revelry and fighting.

On that speck of land, later named Wager Island, commences the rest of the book’s subtitle. There is scant food on the island to sustain life. Celery grass, however, does alleviate the scurvy. A potential lifeline also manifests with the appearance of the Kawésqar.

Inhabiting the Patagonian archipelago for thousands of years, the Kawésqar people marvel the Wager’s crew with how they keep warm in constant near-freezing conditions, lathering their exposed skin with animal fat and tending small fires in their canoes. They extract sustenance from the sea and share it with the castaways. Eventually, an entire Kawésqar village relocates to the island. And then—and you knew this was coming—some of the crew promptly ruin it all. Quite often a group is only as good as its worst members. The worst of the Wager’s crew would, on occasion, take a boat to the ship’s wreckage, drink their fill of spirits, and then return to harass those on the island. One night, as the crew slept, the Kawésqar quietly gather their belongings and disappear.

Two crewmen’s journals supply much of the content on which Grann draws. One is John Bulkeley, a gunner. The other is from John Byron, a young midshipman and future grandfather to poet Lord Byron. Bulkeley is a savvy scribe, for he knows his journals need to reinforce the narrative he’s going to relay to the English admiralty.

Of course any relay is subject to a big-time fact conditional: getting off the blasted island. How this transpires is best left to the reader. But when the mutiny comes, the language used by the mutineers is similar in spirit to what American colonists will argue in the Declaration of Independence some 30 years later. Just as the mutineers name their despot, Captain Cheap, so will the Declaration’s signers name theirs: King George III. In essence, Enlightenment precepts were used, arguing that it’s not they who were in rebellion but their disgraced leaders, men who failed those they were charged to lead.

One faction makes it back to England before the other, commencing the race to peddle a narrative. There are plenty of London broadsheets more than willing to print the various stories from those on the Wager. For the crew, it’s more than an abstract winning of hearts and minds. It’s about solidifying a narrative that will be told to Royal Navy authorities. Under naval codes, punishment for dereliction of duty was already greatly feared by officers and sailors alike. Grann quotes Voltaire’s “Candide,” saying “that the English believed it proper to ‘kill an admiral from time to time in order to encourage the others.’” The admiralty’s ultimate decision is both unexpected and telling.

The Wager is every bit the historical thriller, deserving of the praise it’s garnered. But Grann is also asking the reader to consider larger questions. Why was it necessary to send out warships at all? The events happened under the auspices of the War for Jenkins’ Ear. And if—just by name alone—this sounds like a ridiculous undertaking, you’re not far off. Lives were lost, all in service of…what exactly? Quite a few of the Wager’s crew disappear from the historical record. Grann also mentions the many slaves lost (read: killed) in the Middle Passage during this time period. It’s no accident these nameless lives rarely entered any record at all, except perhaps as a ledger expense. Those responsible certainly had no interest in highlighting such barbarity. Says Grann: “Empires preserve their power with the stories that they tell, but just as critical are the stories they don’t—the dark silences they impose, the pages they tear out.”

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Reviewed by Jason Sullivan