Sebastian Junger
Sebastian Junger is an American journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker who writes about dangerous work and the experience of combat. Born on January 17, 1962, in Belmont, Massachusetts, he studied cultural anthropology at Wesleyan University and started his career as a freelance writer.
His best-known book is The Perfect Storm (1997), the true story of the 1991 fishing boat Andrea Gail and the deadly storm that hit them. The book became a movie and helped renew interest in adventure nonfiction. Junger later spent many years covering the War in Afghanistan, often living with troops. His book War (2010) draws on that reporting and led to the documentary Restrepo (2010), made with photographer Tim Hetherington. Restrepo won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and was nominated for an Academy Award.
Junger has also written Fire (a collection of articles about dangerous places and occupations) and A Death in Belmont (2006), which revisits the Boston Strangler crimes. In 2016 he published Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, exploring how veterans feel more connected with each other than with the rest of society after war. His book Freedom (2021) reflects on the American idea of freedom. He also contributed to Tim Ferriss’ Tools of Titans.
In film, Junger and Hetherington created The Other War: Afghanistan, and they followed soldiers in Afghanistan for Restrepo. The pair later released the film Korengal (2014), a continuation of their exploration of soldiers’ lives in the Korengal Valley. Junger’s work often centers on brotherhood, trauma, and how individuals relate to society, and he aims to tell stories in a way that is immersive and human, sometimes avoiding political analysis.
Personal life and other work: Junger lives in New York City and Cape Cod with his wife and two children; his first daughter was born in 2016. He was previously married to writer Daniela Petrova. He is an atheist and once co-owned a New York City bar called the Half King, which closed in 2019 after 19 years. In 2020 he survived a ruptured pancreatic artery and later wrote In My Time of Dying about his near-death experience and thoughts on the afterlife.
A notable idea he has shared is that journalists should tell people what to think about, not what to think.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 18:46 (CET).