Junger has his head in the clouds about Native American tribes. Their life was so idyllic that even white prisoners would refuse to return to their communities etc. It's all so... romantic and New Age and spiritual and even paleo. He ignores the fact that each tribe had a different culture and a great many were warlike and peace was often kept between different tribes because their methods of torture were so extreme. Similarly the position of women within the tribes varied from near-equality to

There are many good ideas in this book, including disorders of trauma as disorders of integration, isolation, and group dynamic, however I had too many issues with the way this story was told to fully embrace the important message it meant to convey.When I read “tribe” in this book, I imagine only men. Men at war, men at work at construction sites, male aggression, and male friendship. Where are the women? His main example of a “female” style of leadership is about … MEN! (The dual roles taken b...

A fascinating book about community and belonging, and how modern society has moved us away from our roots in potentially signifiant ways. The book opens with a thought provoking fact: in early America, there were numerous instances of white people joining primitive, native Indian societies - but zero instances of the opposite, because "the intensely communal nature of an Indian tribe held an appeal that the material benefits of Western civilization couldn’t necessarily compete with."The book als...

Proves the adage that good things can come in small packages. In this short book, not a wasted word, Junger combines memoir, journalism and scholarly writing to give us a book that makes one think about where our society has been and where it is heading. Tackles the tough subjects of the rising rate of mental illness and PTSD that many in our society are experiencing. Starting at the beginning with the Native Americans and their society that celebrated communal living. Warning us of the selfishn...

"The Army might screw you and your girlfriend might dump you and the enemy might kill you, but the shared commitment to safeguard one another's lives is unnegotiable and only deepens with time. The willingness to die for another person is a form of love that even religions fail to inspire, and the experience of it changes a person profoundly." -Sebastian Junger- 'War'I chose to begin this review with a quote from Sebastian Junger's honest but discomfiting book, War because I felt that what he

“Robert Frost famously wrote that home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. The word ‘tribe’ is far harder to define, but a start might be the people you feel compelled to share the last of your food with…This book is about why that sentiment is such a rare and precious thing in modern society, and how the lack of it has affected us all. It’s about what we can learn from tribal societies about loyalty and belonging and the eternal quest for meaning…”- Sebastia...

I have read several articles recently about our society’s problems with individualism. When I saw Junger’s short book on the subject, I thought it might give me a more in-depth viewpoint on the subject, which it did.Junger tells of Benjamin Franklin’s 1753 observation that white prisoners of Native American Tribes when recused would run back to the Native American Tribe they had been with. But the situation never worked it reverse. Franklin concluded there was something wrong with our society.Ju...

A nostalgic and masculist view on group behaviour and PTSD. Junger promotes a more tribal lifestyle and he thinks we all need hardship, catastrophes and war in order to connect with others. I think he confuses cause and effect. While it seems true that a tight-knit community can be preventive or therapeutic in case of hardship; war and other tragedies will surely generate more trauma. I could hardly finish this short book and he certainly didn't convince me. His arguments felt too simplistic. Li...

**Warning: This review may be longer than the entire book.**Interesting and thought provoking; if not entirely convincing. On the one hand, some very compelling ideas about the feeling of smaller, close knit communities and how they can foster and encourage good mental health and enhance happiness. On the other hand, Junger for the most part, blames wealth and technological advances for the moral decline of America. While not without evidence, it's still an arduous climb to get to where he wants...

This book surprised me.I'm not sure what I was expecting, but, if tribal tends to have a negative connotation these days, this was the opposite. Junger thinks society has fallen apart and lost a necessary tribal aspect. He begins by recounting how American settlers couldn't keep their people from staying with Indian tribes, once they had experienced them, yet the reverse never happened. People are happier in tribes. They even have more leisure time. Of course he's talking about relationships wit...

There are many great books that I cannot wait to introduce to my customers - but then there are other books that I become obsessed with and so passionate for that I need to put it into every single person's hand that walks into my bookstore. Sebastian Junger's new book "Tribe" is one of those books. It is historical, psychological, anthropological and personal. I will think about this book for a very long time. It helped me to understand so much about war, about community, about self. Isn't that...

Junger has an appealing message. That humans have evolved a high order of altruism associated with our tribal social nature which leads us to be willing to take great risks to save another member of the tribe. In many circumstances people are willing to sacrifice themselves for total strangers. Time and again when disasters like earthquakes occur the vast majority of people relinquish all sense of selfishness and pitch in to help. In specific examples like the Blitz of daily bombing of London by...

I’ve started this review twice now – I’m really not sure what to say about this book. Benjamin Franklin has been quoted in a few books I’ve read recently where he explains the problem of people seeming to like Native American life-styles over European ones. This certainly wasn’t what he expected. But there was lots of evidence of Europeans running off and joining Native American tribes, but precious few of Native Americans willingly joining European cities – and even when they did, they tended t...

This book provides a convincing articulation of reasons why modern society is ill suited to the innate social needs of homo sapiens (i.e. human beings). Our ancestors lived—and evolved—many thousands of years in hunter gatherer groups that were closely bonded together in a cooperative bond in order to survive dangerous surroundings. Everybody in the group knew that they were dependent on others, and the group expected loyalty, cooperation, and sharing of resources from individuals in the group.

A quirky little book about a big topic, much bigger than vets and PTSD, and American Indian tribes. Our entire society is sick because there's a lot of suicide and evil people get away with their assorted crimes. Civilization produces many benefits but many bad side effects as well because we keep throwing out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to the old ways. I believe him about the white settlers taken prisoner who were happier living with the indigenous American tribes, but it's not c...

This tiny book packs a lot of informations and experiences. What does it mean to be part of something bigger ... society.... tribes.... the army... its various units ... how soldiers act in war and how they act in peace... are we making use of the veterans that are out there... how to deal with PTSD... how war is good for the cohesion of the community and how natural disasters bring people together and the notion of class vanishes.

Is Western civilization the pinnacle of human achievement? In Tribe, Sebastian Junger questions this notion by looking at, among other examples, why colonial Americans left behind the burgeoning settlements to live with the tribal Indians; why, as technological advances have sped up over time (and accelerate still faster today), we are all “connected” and yet more and more of us feel isolated, depressed and unsatisfied with life in the Information Age; and why comfort is killing us and, rather t...

"The economic and marketing forces of modern society have engineered an environment...that maximize[s] consumption at the long-term cost of well being."- Brandon Hidaka, quoted in Sebastian Junger, Tribe In a series of four essays that grew out of an article Junger wrote in 2015 for Vanity Fair called How PTSD Became A Problem Far Beyond The Battlefield, Junger explores how we can learn from tribal societies about loyalty, belonging, the quest for meaning, and strategies for surviving the commun...

Junger, a war correspondent and world traveler, seeks to promote tribal life, as seen both historically and currently in American Indian and aboriginal groups around the world, as well as in the military. He blames individualism (in terms of hurting the society, such as in alienation and in greed) for the ills of society (mainly in terms of mental illness). Although I greatly admire Junger’s points, and I do strongly wish for a greater sense of altruism, selflessness, and community belonging in

Sebastian Junger poses that tribal societies had a strong sense of community and fairness because these values were necessary to survive. He poses that while tribal culture buffered its members against catastrophic loss (illness, death, violent weather) its sense of community was protection from what today we call PTSD. He makes his case mostly through anecdotes and a few statistics. While there is a lot of food for thought in Junger’s anecdotes they have alternative interpretations. For instanc...