An immersive and gripping tale, sure to hook even readers "not into history." The nature of this microhistory inherently lends itself to a narrative style, and Grann paints scenes by bringing in various contemporaneous sources, facts, and standards of the time period and naval life to enhance his foundation of primary source material of journals and first-hand accounts from the journey. The narration from Dion Graham is impeccable, truly situating the listener on the 18th century ship through Grann's words.

I have never felt closer to climbing the treacherous levels of a mast, harassed by the wind, cold, and sea spray, as the ship rocks on the waves. This is only one example of how Grann pulls in details to fill out the sparse and technical logbooks of the crew. I cannot recommend this book enough to anyone, whether they are interested in history or especially if they aren't. The Wager would serve as a great intro in how history can be interesting for those who were bored in high school and haven't wanted to try anything since! Especially the Dion Graham narration.

Grann thoroughly documents and explains the entire final journey of The Wager, from the dockyards to Wager Island to the aftermath both back in London and the remainder of the fleet around the world. He even explains how such a sensational story was quietly dismissed and relegated to the lesser-known annals of history.

In this thoroughly researched, comprehensive overview of Native American history in the second millenium, DuVal dismisses the seemingly progressive idea that American Indians were victims wiped out by European and US aggressors. Based on the immense breadth of sources, including current Native leaders and scholars, DuVal aims, and succeeds, at telling "even [the] worst era as transformation and survival rather than just victimization and erasure."

Despite what many (non-Native) Americans may think, Native nations controlled the continent until at least the early days of the US, and later in the Midwest and West. Early European settlements and military and merchant powers in North America were used as leverage, allies, buffers, suppliers, and more by the tribes they first interacted with, who were rightfully more focused on their pre-existing societies and conflicts. DuVal brings us through these developments by focusing on several specific native groups and regions, following them from pre-European interactions until today.

The last chapter rushes through about a century of time, though the aim of the book is to bring to light (to the general, non-Native public) to the history and survival of American Indians, and to focus on the resilience and adaptations of Native nations during the more well-known and oppressive recent past.

An impressive and informative work that serves as a starting point for non-academics interested in Native history. Despite the size and sheer volume of information packed into this book, DuVal's style is not too dense and at times even narrative. Additionally, she provides plenty of comprehensive sources, including those by leading Native scholars and authors, for readers to explore specific topics further.

This was an emotional and weird book, but a neutral and interesting "weird". The formatting specifically was fun, with several chapters of chat rooms, emails, video game maps, etc.

It also was not an easy book as far as subject matter. Each chapter is viewed through the inherent lens that each of these three friends experiences the world, and both trans identity and mental illness feature prominently in the narrative.

The character work in this book is the main literary focus. Fun formatting, narrative framing, and the plot all serve to develop the three main characters on their own, in relation to each other, and in relation to others/in society. It was immersive and exploratory, following these three estranged Internet friends in the present, with limited flashbacks to their original online relationships, trying to piece together their evolution and projectory.

All the characters in this book were well-developed (excepting perhaps only the few who made one short appearance) and felt real and complex. As such, each character was their own mix of endearing, frustrating, relatable, and detestable.

The past setting of early Internet culture was extremely nostalgic, and I imagine most readers could tap into that even if they hadn't experienced the same era or type of Internet culture as the protagonists, as I was able to.

Personally, this book was striking (and yet another layer of "weird") in its similarity to my experiences with being trans and having OCD. While no specific mental illness is ever explicitly mentioned in the book, the narrative from each character describes the world from an extremely anxious point of view, with examples of OCD behaviors and varying levels of psychosis. To read internal monologues so similar but just different enough from my own made me feel like I was seen, in both an affirming and unsettling way. Even Lillith's eerie description of the number four that mirrors my obsession, which caused particular issues when I was young:

a balanced world, a world made whole. Often this was a quartered world: four seasons, four elements, four possibilities. Four was the number of balance.

This was definitely one of those books for me that made me feel unstuck from time and reality, from the sheer level of emotions, self-reflection, snd nostalgia and the beautiful strangeness of this book. I consequently disliked it a bit but mostly loved it.

My only other qualm with this book is a few instances of inconsistencies with the passage of time. The switching POV chapters make it hard to pinpoint time and therefore the sequence of events among the three main characters. This does lend itself to the odd, complicated structure and feeling of the narrative. However, these instances stuck out enough that they broke immersion (or if they were not mistakes, then the narrative was even more confusing that I had thought).