Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'll be frank. I've not been a big fan of Junger's previous books, but in this book he puts his finger on one of the most important cultural realities of the twenty-first century, the loss of tight-knit communities. Certainly, Robert Putnam (in his important book BOWLING ALONE) and others have documented similar realities, but Junger's work stands out for two reasons: 1) it is immensely accessible and 2) he arrives at this conclusion from a unique perspective, that of his observation of the military experience. One of his central themes is the idea that soldiers in combat situations have such an intense experience of interdependency, solidarity and community that they often struggle upon returning to civilian life in the US, in which there rarely is any similar sort of community to which they can belong. TRIBE is well-worth reading for pointed socio-political questions it asks about American civic life and for the keen observations it makes about the combat experience. Thankfully, Junger doesn't offer any easy fixes, but on the other hand, he doesn't do much to stir our imaginations about how to cultivate in American civilian life the sort of solidarity that combat engenders. At times, he does tend toward idealizing the Native American experience of tribal life, and that sort of idealism won't be particularly helpful for addressing the dissolution of community that we so intensely experience. Regardless, this is a timely book that should not only widely read, but also widely discussed.