Captain's Dinner - by Adam Cohen (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Four men in a lifeboat. Two weeks without food. One impossible choice that would reshape the boundaries between survival and murder.

On May 19, 1884, the yacht Mignonette set sail from England on what should have been an uneventful voyage. When their vessel sank in the Atlantic, Captain Thomas Dudley and his crew found themselves adrift in a tiny lifeboat. As days turned to weeks, they faced an unthinkable choice: starve to death or resort to cannibalism.

Their decision to sacrifice the youngest - 17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker - ignited a firestorm of controversy upon their rescue. Instead of being hailed as heroes and survivors, Dudley and his crew found themselves at the center of a landmark murder trial that would transform law and ethics forever.

In Captain's Dinner, acclaimed legal historian and New York Times bestselling author Adam Cohen masterfully reconstructs both the harrowing weeks at sea and the sensational trial that followed. Through this Victorian tragedy, Cohen reveals an enduring conflict between humanity's most primal instincts and its highest moral principles, forcing readers to ask themselves: how far would they go to stay alive?

Perfect for readers of David Grann's The Wager and Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea, this haunting true story has become the classic real-life illustration of one of philosophy's greatest moral dilemmas, captivating audiences from ethics classrooms to Hollywood and inspiring countless explorations in film, television, and popular culture of humanity's most challenging question: When does survival justify murder?

Review Quotes

"Adam Cohen's book transports the reader to 1884 and a dingy with four shipwrecked British sailors who survive weeks at sea by becoming murderers and cannibals. In gripping descriptions, the book details the trial, popular response and the enduring legacy of this case for Anglo-American law. The story and its implications will engross you and make you think long and hard about what you might do to survive in extreme circumstances."--Ezekiel J. Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania

"Brilliant and profound, Captain's Dinner had me gripped from page one. Even as he takes on wrenching moral issues, Cohen brings humanity and wit to the most serious and ghastly of subjects. With vivid, fast-paced writing, extraordinary research, and incredible historical detail, Cohen takes us back to the scene of the crime--and brings it alive. No one can write like Adam Cohen. A masterpiece!"--Amy Chua, Yale Law Professor and author of Political Tribes and The Golden Gate

"Cohen has a gift for creating compelling narratives that show us the troubles of real people long ago, and connecting ethical challenges of the past to current concerns. A wonderful read."--Tia Powell, MD, Professor of Epidemiology and Psychiatry, Division of Bioethics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

About the Author

Adam Cohen, who served as a member of the New York Times editorial board and as a senior writer for Time, is the author of Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck, which was longlisted for the National Book Award. He is also the author of Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court's Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America, and Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he was president of volume 100 of the Harvard Law Review.