War

War, a battle journal by best-selling reporter and filmmaker Sebastian Junger, describes a year in the rugged highlands of Afghanistan with a platoon of American soldiers who face the worst fighting and toughest conditions of any unit in the US military. Published in 2010, the book describes months of mind-numbing danger, multiple firefights per day, injuries and deaths, and matter-of-fact heroism. The men display extreme toughness, gallows humor, and intense mutual loyalty despite the nearly unbearable conditions.

Author Junger and cinematographer Tim Hetherington were embedded with the platoon, where they witnessed and filmed most of the scenes described in War. Junger’s dispatches, published in the magazine Vanity Fair, were then collated into the book. He produced the companion documentary Restrepo, which received the Grand Prize at the Sundance Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 2014, Junger released a follow-up documentary, Korengal. He has also created several other documentaries and books, including the #1 best-seller The Perfect Storm, which was developed into a successful motion picture.

War contains many incidents of extreme violence, while certain other scenes are sexual or scatological in nature; reader caution is advised.