Survival is a choice, but at what cost?
The Captain’s Dinner Official Substack is a companion newsletter to Captain’s Dinner, Adam Cohen’s forthcoming book about the 1884 shipwreck of the yacht Mignonette, the shocking decision of three marooned sailors to kill and eat their cabin boy, and the sensational trial that shaped the way societies think about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. Captain’s Dinner hits shelves on November 18, 2025.
Behind the ‘stack, you’ll find two writers: Adam Cohen and Adrienne Westenfeld.
About Adam:
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 long listed 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.
About Adrienne:
Adrienne Westenfeld is a writer and editor with a decade of experience at the intersection of glossy magazines and book publishing. For the past decade, she worked as an editor at national magazines, including Esquire and Town & Country. Most recently, she was the Books and Fiction Editor at Esquire, where she oversaw books coverage, founded Esquire Book Club, and commissioned original fiction. She now runs her own editorial services firm, Adrienne Westenfeld Editorial, where she works with authors and publishers on editorial projects.
Stay tuned for regular dispatches from the world of Captain’s Dinner, including:
A four-part serialization of the book
Interviews with Hollywood luminaries on fictional cannibalism
Conversations with survival experts and cannibalism scholars
Deep dives into Victorian court transcripts and legal documents
Roundtable debates asking the ultimate question: what would you do?
Cultural explorations of pop culture's obsession with survival stories
