Sebastian Junger

Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians -- but Indians almost never did the same. Tribal society has been exerting an almost gravitational pull on Westerners for hundreds of years, and the reason lies deep in our evolutionary past as a communal species. The most recent example of that attraction is combat veterans who come home to find themselves missing the...

Junger, author of "The Perfect Storm," turns his brilliant and empathetic eye to the reality of combat in this on-the-ground account that follows a single platoon through a 15-month tour of duty in the most dangerous outpost in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley.

On October 29, 1991, the 70-foot longliner Andrea Gail,on day 40 of an extended commercial swordfishing trip, was lost in a convergence of three powerful storms off Canada's Grand Banks. Data buoys measured waves as high as 100 feet, and the boat was hit with winds measuring 80 knots (92 miles per hour). The Andrea Gail's emergency beacon washed ashore that November on Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, but the boat and 6-man crew were never...

Hear the stories of men and women battling the elements, and sometimes each other, to stay alive, confronting savage storms, rogue waves, icebergs, sharks, starvation and their own fear and suffering. From Sebastian Junger’s The Whale Hunter to Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny to Lawrence Beesley’s The Loss of The S.S. Titanic, Rough Water is a unique collection of the finest writing on why men and women go to sea, and what they find there. Rough...

In the spring of 1963, the quiet suburb of Belmont, Massachusetts, is rocked by a shocking sex murder that exactly fits the pattern of the Boston Strangler. Sensing a break in the case that has paralyzed the city of Boston, the police track down a black man, Roy Smith, who cleaned the victim's house that day and left a receipt with his name on the kitchen counter. Smith is hastily convicted of the Belmont murder, but the terror of the Strangler continues....

The Andrea Gail is a sword fishing boat out of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Billy Tyne is her captain, down-on-his-luck from a recent losing streak, looking to bring back one big score so he and his crew will have the money to stay ashore during the coming winter. So out they go, and they hit it big, hauling in what the crew estimates is a quarter-million-dollars worth of fish. Unfortunately, they haven't paid attention to the weather forecasts or...