David Grann is an American journalist and author known for narrative nonfiction that combines archival research, investigative reporting and the pacing of a thriller. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2003, covering crime, deception, exploration and unresolved historical mysteries. His breakthrough book, The Lost City of Z, investigates the disappearance of British explorer Percy Fawcett during his search for an ancient civilisation in the Amazon. Grann has also published the essay collections The Devil and Sherlock Holmes and The White Darkness, the latter centred on polar explorer Henry Worsley’s attempt to cross Antarctica alone.
Grann’s best-known historical work, Killers of the Flower Moon, investigates the systematic murders of wealthy Osage people in Oklahoma during the 1920s and the failures and corruption surrounding the early federal investigation. The Wager reconstructs the wreck of a British naval vessel off the coast of Patagonia in 1741, the crew’s struggle for survival, accusations of mutiny and the competing accounts later presented at a court martial. His books are nonfiction rather than historical novels, but they are particularly relevant to readers interested in exploration, colonial expansion, maritime history, Indigenous history and crimes concealed or distorted by official narratives.
