The book is less about the military than I thought it would be, and that was a welcome surprise.

He compares these tribes with American society, where they differ, and how these differences can be devastating on human survival. It is all interesting and gave me a lot to think about.

How they work and live together, what things are needed to succeed, and what transgressions can not be tolerated.

Junger weaves in a lot of context of the power of tribe through discussing American Indian tribes (as well as other cultures more generally) and how they treat one another. And that these tribes, weather they be neighborhood or nation, help to keep humans mentally healthy. It is more of an essay on how we need to rethink our social obligations to one another. I thought it would be stories of individual soldiers and their journeys through PTSD and how they did or didn’t find community. I thought this book would be about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). TRIBE explains why we are stronger when we come together, and how that can be achieved even in today’s divided world. It explains the irony that-for many veterans as well as civilians-war feels better than peace, adversity can turn out to be a blessing, and disasters are sometimes remembered more fondly than weddings or tropical vacations. The loss of closeness that comes at the end of deployment may explain the high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by military veterans today.Ĭombining history, psychology, and anthropology, TRIBE explores what we can learn from tribal societies about loyalty, belonging, and the eternal human quest for meaning. The most recent example of that attraction is combat veterans who come home to find themselves missing the incredibly intimate bonds of platoon life. 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. If you’re not familiar with Tribe, here is a little more about this book.ĭecades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians-but Indians almost never did the same. When I saw that he wrote another book about the struggles that face our veterans when they return home, I couldn’t resist it. He helped to create the film Restrepo which I love, and write the book Warwhich is really good. A few years ago, I fell in love with reading books about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and one of the most respected journalists of that subject is Sebastian Junger.

Tribe by Sebastian Junger