3 recommendations for David Grann fans who loved Killers of the Flower Moon, The Wager.
If Grann's excavation of systematic murder for oil wealth left you furious at America's sanitized history, Keefe's dissection of the Sackler dynasty delivers that same cold dread—three generations weaponizing medicine to build a pharmaceutical empire while addiction ravaged communities. It's the Osage murders in a boardroom, with the same meticulous research turning corporate documents into devastating evidence.
If The Wager's shipwreck brutality and collapsing naval hierarchies left you breathless, River of the Gods delivers the same imperial catastrophe—this time drowning Victorian explorers in the Nile's unforgiving currents. Millard excavates another expedition where ambition murders reason, rivalries eclipse the prize, and survival strips every civilized lie bare. Same archival obsession, same psychological unraveling, different continent of ruin.
The Wager hooked you because Grann stripped away heroic myths to expose the savage truth of men fracturing under pressure—where mutiny, class warfare, and colonial arrogance collide with survival's brutal calculus. You didn't want sanitized history; you wanted the raw, unvarnished horror of how civilization crumbles when the environment stops negotiating. That hunger for psychological breakdowns, leadership incompetence, and meticulous research woven into thriller-like pacing doesn't end with one shipwreck.