Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging - Sebastian Junger

If Junger did exhaustive research in preparation for Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, it doesn't really show in the text. I liked the premise, and when he started to delve into facts and figures the book felt grounded, but then it drifted into anecdotes which seemed to be given as much weight by the author as the empirical evidence. And that would be fine if this was a straightforward memoir, but instead, Tribe operates as an uncomfortable mix of memoir and topical thesis that never feels quite confident in its own message.

Listen, I agree, today's culture seems to be lacking in connection. Look no further than the things people are willing to say to each other behind the relative anonymity of internet comment sections. And smaller tribes. tribes on the brink of survival seem to form more cohesive units. But that type of intensity is necessarily temporary. Why does America seem to have more than its fair share of PTSD diagnoses? Junger suggests it's the contrast between home life, the lack of cohesive communities, and a little bit of fraud that can account for this. But again, where this information comes from and whether it's empirical evidence or Junger's opinion isn't really clear (maybe it's spelled out in the notes section at the end, but by that point, I just didn't care). 

Some of the details in the story rang true for me. When I returned from deployment, I remember feeling anxious and disconnected. Over time it faded, as Junger states is normal. I also found certain statements particulary interesting: 

"Unlike criticism, contempt is particularly toxic because it assumes a moral superiority in the speaker."

American Indians, proportionally, provide more soldiers to America’s wars than any other demographic group in the country.

roughly half of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have applied for permanent PTSD disability. Since only 10 percent of our armed forces experience actual combat, the majority of vets claiming to suffer from PTSD seem to have been affected by something other than direct exposure to danger.

It was better when it was really bad 

Interestingly, when I visited St. Petersburg in 2004, standing in red square next to a Burbury store in which I could afford nothing, I asked my tour guide how life had changed for him after the fall of communism. "I liked it better before," he said. "You had nothing, but everyone had nothing." Perhaps there was a shared sense of community through shared hardship.

Anyway, this was thought-provoking and interesting. But it just missed the mark for me.

3/5 Stars.