The Perfect Storm

Sebastian Junger was born in 1962 in Belmont, Massachusetts. He received his BA degree from Wesleyan University in Cultural Anthropology in 1984. He is a freelance journalist who writes for numerous magazines, including Outside, American Heritage, Men's Journal, and the New York Times Magazine. As an underemployed journalist who assigned himself stories and worked as a stringer for the Associated Press in Bosnia, Junger was fascinated by the dangers that people face regularly while doing ordinary jobs.

Junger was working as a climber for a tree removal service when the storm occurred that provided the inspiration for his first book. The Perfect Storm (1997) is a carefully researched account of the wreck of the swordfishing boat Andrea Gail, The wreck took place during what one meteorologist called a "perfect storm"--a storm with the worst possible conditions. In order to relate the story of a disaster that left no survivors and had no eyewitnesses, Junger used a combination of sound research, technical detail, and personal insight to reconstruct the final hours. After the publication of this book he was nicknamed the new Hemingway. In 2000, this book was made into a film starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg.

He wrote several books such as War which is about his time spent with a U.S. Army platoon in Afghanistan. At the Sundance Film Festival in 2010 his documentary Restrepo won Grand Jury Prize for a domestic documentary.

Junger's book, Tribe, made the New York Times Bestseller list in 2016.

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