Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

Sebastian Junger (born 1962) is an American journalist, author, and filmmaker known for his 1997 novel The Perfect Storm and for the documentary films Restrepo and Korengal. Junger enjoys a celebrity-journalist status in the mainstream media thanks to his well-regarded war reporting and best-selling books, and he writes Tribe secure in his established reputation; he does not recount his qualifications nor dwell on his own experiences. Readers of Tribe learn in the book’s Introduction that Junger’s talent for exploring the limits of human courage, connectedness, and communal good will have been in development over the course of his lifetime. Junger’s lived experiences performing a range of working class jobs, traveling to places that mainstream America might regard as off-the-beaten-path or brimming with danger (Navajo reservation, Sarajevo, the Middle East, Africa), and his ability to be conversant with everyone from neurobiologists to fishermen to soldiers, across a diversity of cultures, bolsters his credentials for observing social life.

Most important, perhaps, to Junger’s authority as a writer is his willingness to live the dangers that he is writing about. In Tribe, Junger uses his personal experiences, and his obvious identification with soldiers, to frame each chapter and to ground the issues in real-life terms.