Sebastian Junger
Sebastian Junger is the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of WAR, The Perfect Storm, A Death in Belmont and Fire. He is also the acclaimed director of the documentary Restrepo and Korengal. As a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and as a contributor to ABC News, he has covered major international news stories and has been awarded the National Magazine Award and an SAIS Novartis Prize for Journalism.
Junger’s newest book entitled Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, takes readers on an investigation of the experiences of veterans and proposes that a major cause of pain is not being at war, but coming home. We all have a strong instinct to belong to small groups defined by clear purpose and understanding—"tribes." In Tribe, Junger demonstrates how this tribal connection has been largely lost in modern society. Furthermore, he examines PTSD as a side effect of soldiers leaving the close bonds they’ve formed in their military platoons and returning to a disconnected modern society, and argues that regaining a sense of closeness may be the key to our psychological survival.
In Spring 2017, National Geographic will air Junger’s latest documentary feature, entitled Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS. Culled from nearly 1,000 hours of stunningly visceral footage, the film explores some of the horrific conditions that refugees commonly flee from, and show their humanity and courage in the face of physical threats as well as a largely hostile political environment. Junger captures the Syrian war’s harrowing carnage and socio-political consequences while painting an alarming picture of the West’s role in the creation of ISIS.
Junger became a fixture in the international media when, as a first-time author, he commanded the New York Times best-seller list for more than three years with The Perfect Storm, which became a major motion picture starring George Clooney.
His reporting on Afghanistan in 2000, profiling Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, became the subject of the National Geographic documentary Into the Forbidden Zone. In 2001, his expertise and experience reporting in Afghanistan led him to cover the war as a special correspondent for ABC News and Vanity Fair. His work has also been published in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, and Men’s Journal. He has reported on the LURD besiegement of Monrovia in Liberia, human rights abuses in Sierra Leone, war crimes in Kosovo, the peacekeeping mission in Cyprus, wildfire in the American West, guerilla war in Afghanistan, and hostage-taking in Kashmir. He has worked as a freelance radio correspondent during the war in Bosnia.
Junger is a native New Englander and a graduate of Wesleyan University. Attracted since childhood to “extreme situations and people at the edges of things,” Junger worked as a high-climber for tree removal companies. After a chainsaw injury, he decided to focus on journalism, primarily writing about people with dangerous jobs, from fire-fighting to commercial fishing (which led, of course, to The Perfect Storm).
In 1998 Junger established The Perfect Storm Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides educational opportunities for children of people in the maritime professions.