Fire FROM OUR EDITORS
Bestselling author Sebastian Junger brings his heart-pounding prose to bear on forest fires, terrorism, and war, in a collection of pieces that span a decade's worth of journalism. Junger's firsthand acounts of how people handle danger reveals both the awe and the terror evoked by desperate situations.
ANNOTATION
Here is the same meticulous prose brought to bear on the inner workings of a terrifying elemental force; here is a cast of characters risking everything in an effort to bring that force under control.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"For readers and viewers of The Perfect Storm, opening this new work by Sebastian Junger will be like stepping off the deck of the Andrea Gail and into the inferno of a fire burning out of control in the steep canyons of Idaho. Here is the same meticulous prose brought to bear on the inner workings of a terrifying elemental force: here is a cast of characters risking everything in an effort to bring that force under control." Few writers have been to so many desperate corners of the globe as has Sebastian Junger: fewer still have provided such starkly memorable evocations of characters and events. From the murderous mechanics of the diamond trade in Sierra Leone to the logic of guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan and the forensics of genocide in Kosovo, this new collection of Junger's nonfiction will take you places you wouldn't dream of going to on your own.
FROM THE CRITICS
[M]agnificently conceived, lovingly written, perfectly evocative of a place, a time, a passion.
Maxim
[P]ropelled by dynamic reporting that reads as fluidly as great fiction.
Atlantic Monthly
[M]agnificently conceived, lovingly written, perfectly evocative of a place, a time, a passion.
Book Magazine
What can be as big and dangerous as a cataclysmic storm? Why, a raging forest fire, of course. Fans of Junger's The Perfect Storm will no doubt be enthralled by the title story of his second book, a collection of magazine article whose subjects include whalers and military rebels. Urban firefighters are dramatic enough in their own right, but the firefighting crews Junger writes about are in a different realm altogether. They can be found parachuting into tinderbox forests and battling raging firestorms that have the explosive power of a nuclear detonation. Although Junger doesn't seem to be afflicted with the self-aggrandizing personality common to other adrenaline journalists like Anthony Loyd and Deborah Copaken Kogan, he is still drawn to the extreme edges of human experience. The best of these stories are marked with a generous humanity and sharpness of eye; in fact, the worst one could say is that they end too quickly. —Chris Barsanti
Publishers Weekly
Danger junkies rejoice! The Perfect Storm king returns with no, not a new booklength narrative, but a collection of previously published magazine articles. Junger spent the last few years documenting some of the world's toughest places: Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and the former Yugoslavia, as well as nonmilitary hot spots like American wildfires. His reporting on wartime atrocities for Vanity Fair is well known, and his wilderness stories for adventure magazines like Outside and Men's Health have brought him an enormous extra-book readership. Junger's newest can be considered a sort of early Greatest Hits volume, wherein Junger's disaster-zone reporting will whet the appetites of risk voyeurs everywhere. Consider his interview with Afghan guerrilla leader Ahmad Shah Massoud ("After we'd spent half an hour ducking the shells, the commander said he'd just received word that Taliban troops were preparing to attack the position, and it might be better if we weren't around for it"), or his Kosovo klatch with Serbian paramilitaries ("The men grinned broadly at us. One of them wasn't holding a gun in his hands. He was holding a huge double-bladed ax."). But Junger is more than a dispassionate adventure-monger; he is an observer awed by the courage of "people confronting situations that could easily destroy them." Whether describing the trials of airborne forest firefighters or the occupational hazards of old-fashioned harpoon-and-rope whale hunting, Junger challenges readers to reconsider their fondness for ease: "Life in modern society is designed to eliminate as many unforeseen events as possible, and as inviting as that seems, it leaves us hopelessly underutilized. And that is where the ideaof `adventure' comes in." (Oct.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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