In April 1719, readers in London picked up a book whose title page claimed to be the true autobiography of a mariner from York who survived 28 years alone on a deserted island, and they believed it. Daniel Defoe concealed his identity so thoroughly that Robinson Crusoe became what many scholars consider the birth of realistic fiction and the first English novel. This deep dive treats Crusoe’s life chronologically, examines what makes him tick, and then pulls apart the historical DNA of the real castaways Defoe stitched together.

The conversation follows Crusoe from his defiance of his father in 1651 through shipwreck, two years of enslavement by Barbary corsairs, a prosperous Brazilian plantation, and the illegal slaving expedition that wrecked him near the Orinoco in 1659. It explores his transformation of the Island of Despair into a microeconomy of barley, goats, pottery, and raisins, his Puritan religious awakening, the footprint in the sand, his debate over cultural relativism, the colonial dynamic with Friday, the mutineers who inherit his kingdom, and his return after 28 years, two months, and 19 days. It then examines Alexander Selkirk, Pedro Serrano, Henry Pitman, and the Miskito man named Will as real sources.

• Why economists still use Crusoe economics to illustrate opportunity cost and labor allocation in a zero-trade world
• How Crusoe’s compulsive greed, not bad luck, drives his downfall
• The paternalism and cultural erasure built into the master-servant relationship with Friday
• Why Selkirk explains the isolation but Serrano’s turtle-blood survival and Pitman’s lodgings above a publisher’s shop explain the rest
• The Robinsonade genre, the Robinson Crusoes of Warsaw, and J.G. Ballard’s idea of inverted Crusoeism in a hyper-connected world