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Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging Hardcover – May 24, 2016
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Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians-but Indians almost never did the same. 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. The most recent example of that attraction is combat veterans who come home to find themselves missing the incredibly intimate bonds of platoon life. 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.
Combining history, psychology, and anthropology, Tribe explores what we can learn from tribal societies about loyalty, belonging, and the eternal human quest for meaning. 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. Tribe explains why we are stronger when we come together, and how that can be achieved even in today's divided world.
- Print length192 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherTwelve
- Publication dateMay 24, 2016
- Dimensions5.25 x 0.75 x 7.75 inches
- ISBN-109781455566389
- ISBN-13978-1455566389
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"There are three excellent reasons to read Sebastian Junger's new book: the clarity of his thought, the elegance of his prose, and the provocativeness of his chosen subject. Within a compact space, the sheer range of his inquiry is astounding."―S. C. Gwynne, New York Times bestselling author of Rebel Yell and Empire of the Summer Moon
"Sebastian Junger has turned the multifaceted problem of returning veterans on its head. It's not so much about what's wrong with the veterans, but what's wrong with us. If we made the changes suggested in TRIBE, not only our returning veterans, but all of us, would be happier and healthier. Please read this book."―Karl Marlantes, New York Times bestselling author of Matterhorn and What It Is Like to Go to War
"Junger uses every word in this slim volume to make a passionate, compelling case for a more egalitarian society."―Booklist
"The author resists the temptation to glorify war as the solution to a nation's mental ills and warns against the tendency "to romanticize Indian life," but he does succeed in showing "the complicated blessings of 'civilization,' " while issuing warnings about divisiveness and selfishness that should resonate in an election year. The themes implicit in the author's bestsellers are explicit in this slim yet illuminating volume."―Kirkus Reviews
"Thought-provoking...a gem."―The Washington Post
"TRIBE is an important wake-up call. Let's hope we don't sleep through the alarm."―Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Compelling...Junger...offers a starting point for mending some of the toxic divisiveness rampant in our current political and cultural climate."―The Boston Globe
"Junger argues with candor and grace for the everlasting remedies of community and connectedness."―O Magazine
"TRIBE is a fascinating, eloquent and thought-provoking book..packed with ideas...It could help us to think more deeply about how to help men and women battered by war to find a new purpose in peace."―The Times of London
"This is a brilliant little book driven by a powerful idea and series of reflections by the bestselling author of the bestselling books The Perfect Storm and War, and the film documentary Restrepo, about fighting in Afghanistan...The strongest experience of companionship and community often comes with the extremes of war. Junger is particularly good on the stress and exhilaration experienced by reporters, aid workers, and soldiers in combat - and the difficulties they face on return...I would give this gem of an essay to anyone embarking on the understanding of human society and governance."―Evening Standard
"An electrifying tapestry of history, anthropology, psychology and memoir that punctures the stereotype of the veteran as a war-damaged victim in need of salvation. Rather than asking how we can save our returning servicemen and women, Junger challenges us to take a hard look in the mirror and ask whether we can save ourselves."―The Guardian
"Junger has identified one of the last cohesive tribes in America and, through an examination of its culture of self-subjugation grasps for a remedy that might reunite a fragmented civilian society."―Elliot Ackerman, Times Literary Supplement
TRIBE is an extended reflection on the need for inclusion and belonging...written by an impassioned war correspondent less concerned with the scars of battle than the psychological dislocation experienced by those returning home, who have experienced tribal inclusion, but now face a future without it.―Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
TRIBE is a fascinating look into why inspires ancient human virtues of honor, courage and commitment on the battlefield, and the difficulty that can arise when a combat tour is over. While the book may easily fit in a soldier's small cargo pocket, it packs immensely valuable insight that is sure to bring understanding to military and civilian readers alike.―San Antonio Express-News
I first read about this history several months ago in Sebastian Junger's excellent book, TRIBE. It has haunted me since. It raises the possibility that our culture is built on some fundamental error about what makes people happy and fulfilled.―David Brooks, The New York Times
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : 1455566381
- Publisher : Twelve; 1st edition (May 24, 2016)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 192 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781455566389
- ISBN-13 : 978-1455566389
- Item Weight : 9.3 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.25 x 0.75 x 7.75 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,519 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Sebastian Junger is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of War, The Perfect Storm, Fire, and A Death in Belmont. Together with Tim Hetherington, he directed the Academy Award-nominated film Restrepo, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. He is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and has been awarded a National Magazine Award and an SAIS Novartis Prize for journalism. He lives in New York City.
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Junger cites a lot of facts on evolution. Human nature reflects that of our primate ancestors and even more our humanoid ancestors up until modern times. Our ability to support one another in small societies was key to our success, the key to our rising to the top of the heap. Evolutionary psychologists – I provide links to their books below – credit human language with giving us the ability to work together for the common good. We became extremely effective at supporting each other in times of hardship such as war, famine, and natural disaster.
I have lived in Ukraine for 10 years. Our hardships are not as harsh as Junger describes, but certainly worse than the United States. Ukraine is relatively poor and somewhat more poorly governed. On the other hand it is ethnically homogeneous. The level of mutual support is a continual source of amazement. Just on the day I write this, the bus conductor flirted delightfully with my five-year-old son, I had the opportunity to help a grandmother put a stroller on a bus, and at that very same moment a young man was helping an older guy take a heavy suitcase off the bus. All of this is unremarkable, but it gives everybody involved the good feeling of a common undertaking. This, translated into much more severe circumstances, is what Junger is writing about.
It is a five-star book simply for raising an important topic that is not often discussed. It is a counterbalance to Stephen Pinker's excellent The better Angels of our Nature . Yes we have become more docile. No, it is not an unmixed blessing.
Here is my long review of the short book.
Chapter 1 – The men and the dogs
Indians and Europeans confronted one another over the course of three centuries, the early 17th through the early 20th. Although the Indians were still Stone Age, they managed to continue to fight as they were pushed back.
The Indians took many European Americans captive. Many of them were integrated into Indian society, some marrying Indians. Many observers, including Benjamin Franklin, noted that upon being "freed" from captivity a significant number refused to go. The children knew no other life than Indian, and could not be socialized into American life. Mixed marriage spouses grieved terribly at being separated.
At the same time, quite a few Indians were adopted and fostered into American families. This was a much less successful effort. Almost invariably, the Indians would slip away and returned to the tribes when they could.
Junger generalizes from North American Indians to all Indians. Indian societies such as the Maya, Aztecs and Inca were hierarchical. They were considered the most civilized. The Inca were certainly the most advanced in architecture and technology. They were the most socially advanced in terms of their numbers and geographical domination. Paraguay's Tupi Guarani adapted fairly well and are still very much around; theirs is the only Indian tongue to be used as a national language. Read Charles C. Mann's 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus .
This is the basis for Junger's book, the observation that tribal affinity is very strong and the lament that it is missing from today's American society. In this he is right. All Indian societies were communal in a way that America never has been. Moreover, we are losing that of it which we once had.
Europeans loved the freedom of Indian life. It was not constrained by marriage – you could be married when you wanted and unmarried when it was convenient. If you are a good hunter you could have multiple wives. Women bore fewer children. Junger does not go into why, but Mother Nature explains that primitive peoples suckle their children longer, preventing ovulation.
Junger asks "The question for Western society is not so much why tribal life might be so appealing – it seems obvious on the face of it – but why Western society is so unappealing.
Junger writes "Among anthropologists the common are considered to present a fairly accurate picture of our hominid ancestors lived for more than a million years before the advent of agriculture. Genetic adaptations take about 25,000 years to appear in humans, so the enormous changes that came with agriculture in the last 10,000 years have hardly begun to affect our gene pool." Note that this is in contradiction to Nicholas Wade's A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History , Harpending and Cochran's The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution and Philippe Rushton's. Race, Evolution and Behavior . As a counterpoint to the idea that it is all cultural, note the difficulty that American Indian children have even when adopted at birth.
Junger writes that agriculture and industry gave people more personal property and let them make more and more individualistic choices. Their choices unavoidably diminish group efforts toward a common good. Roy Baumeister would elaborate on this in Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men . The nature of our group efforts changed from hunting to military, corporate and ecclesiastical organizations. Broad nets of working relationships among men are the foundation of culture.
Junger says quote "self-determination theory holds that human beings need three basic things in order to be content: they need to feel competent at what they do; they need to feel authentic in their lives; and they need to feel connected to others. These values are considered "intrinsic" to human happiness and far outweigh "extrinsic" values such as beauty, money, and status.
Primitive societies are marked by strong egalitarianism and a lack of authority. Freeloading was not tolerated. In the extreme, other members of the group would assassinate the freeloader. It was all highly personal – there was no authority.
The costs of fraud in modern society are high. Welfare cheats cost an average of $5,000 per year per household. At the top end, defense contractors and finance industry cheats may have cost $45,000 per citizen in the last recession. We have no shame, and no collective will to prevent the cheating. He writes "The riots and demonstrations against racial discrimination that later took place. In Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore Maryland led to changes in part because they attained a level of violence that threatened the civil order."
Chapter 2. War makes you an animal
Junger's father supported him signing up for the draft. The Vietnam War may have been immoral, but one has a moral obligation to serve his country. Sign up, and then object if you must. His father's code of loyalty is admirable, but out of fashion.
War didn't call him, but Junger found himself in Sarajevo as a correspondent at the age of 31. He recounts how people held up even when life was reduced to the basics. The Serbs surrounded and isolated Sarajevo. Between snipers and tank fire killed 20% of the population. Nonetheless, the decency, the humanity of those who were left went up.
He cites as well an earthquake in Italy, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and the London blitz is bringing out the best in people. Emile Durkheim found that when European countries went to war, suicide rates dropped. Psychiatric wards in Paris were strangely empty during both world wars.
Junger writes a gripping account of the Springhill mine disaster of 1958 in Nova Scotia. He describes the leadership qualities in different phases – first the super macho heroes who led the trapped miners to investigate escape routes, then the gentler souls who sustained morale when nothing else could be done. Leaders rose to the occasion.
The chapter closes with a long account of his discussion with the woman he had known during the siege of Sarajevo 25 years earlier. However horrible things had been, there had been a camaraderie that made her nostalgic. "We were the happiest, and we laughed more."
Chapter 3 – In bitter safety I awake
The chapter title is taken from a Siegfried Sassoon, written as he was in a hospital, away from the front-line battalion he longed to rejoin.
Junger starts off with an account of post-traumatic stress syndrome. He encountered it after being under attack by the Taliban for a couple of months in an outpost in Afghanistan. He tells of other people he knew who suffered from it, and of the psychologists' analysis that it is a very reasonable product of evolution. It conditions its sufferers to endure that kind of hardship.
Most significant, PTSD does not set in immediately, but usually comes after the traumatic experience that triggers it. The person is thus not impaired at the time he needs his full faculties, but the later replay in his mind conditions him for the next time.
The irony is that PTSD affects people who were in war zones as support troops more than people who were on the front lines. The elite troops who take the highest casualties do not suffer as much. On the other hand, those in the rear echelons who did not see much action have higher claim rates.
Part of it is bogus. Junger reports that true victims of PTSD avoid the VA because they hate coming across the fakers who claim it simply to get $3,000 a month for life. But he contends that the problem is real. It affects not only military veterans but also people returning home from the Peace Corps. His thesis is that reentry into a boring, regimented, depersonalized society is the major problem.
Junger concludes: "either way (PTSD or simple alienation), it makes one wonder exactly what it is about modern society that is so mortally dispiriting to come home to. Junger even quotes one man who says "now that AIDS is no longer a death sentence, I must admit that I miss those days of extreme brotherhood."
Israel has low rates of PTSD despite a high level of combat over its history. Junger credits this to the fact that Israeli soldiers return to a society that understands war and accepts what the men went through.
Junger reports how in Sierra Leone NGOs coming in to help former combatants reintegrate into life educated them with regard to the fact that they were victims. Victimhood brought benefits – they learned how to be victims. See Linda Polman's The Crisis Caravan: What's Wrong with Humanitarian Aid? for a horrifying account.
Junger concludes "unfortunately, for the past decade American soldiers who returned to a country that displays many indicators of low social resilience. "They take the disability pay – it would be stupid to refuse – but they are not integrated into society. Charles Murray describes how such people live in Fishtown, Philadelphia in Coming Apart -The State of White America, 1960-2010 .
Chapter 4 – Calling home from Mars
Junger witnessed a bar fight in Pamplona between French-speaking Moroccans and Spanish, all of them drunk. The insight is that the fight was over nothing – a battered football helmet – and was resolved by everybody drinking out of the football helmet, after which they became drinking buddies and all was forgotten. The fighting is just a part of male culture.
Junger avows that there are many costs to modern society. Certainly there are great costs to the environment. The one that concerns him most is the cost to our humanity. There is little today that calls on our sense of altruism and sharing, or our sense of mutual defense. We are no longer tribal, and as primates we need the intimacy that comes with the tribal affiliation.
War provides this intimacy. However, when a soldier returns from war it is gone, and he may be at sea. As cited above in the case of Israel, some societies are better than others.
Junger offers an interesting observation that after 9/11 the rates of violent crime suicide and psychiatric disturbances dropped immediately. In many countries antisocial behavior goes down in wartime.
Junger goes into detail about Vietnam vet named Gregory Gomez, an Apache Indian who served as a Marine reconnaissance man in Vietnam. Indians are overrepresented in the American Armed Forces, and especially in elite units. It calls out the best characteristics from their warrior heritage.
Returning to the United States is always an ordeal for Junger. Americans speak with an incredible contempt about – depending on their views – rich, the poor, the educated, the foreign-born, the president, or the whole US government. It's a kind of contempt that is usually reserved for wartime enemies, except that is now applied to our fellow citizens. Junger writes that "unlike criticism, contempt is quickly toxic because it assumes a moral superiority. Contempt is often directed at people who have been excluded from a group or declared unworthy of its benefits.… Contempt is one of four behaviors that, statistically, can predict divorce and married couples. People who speak with contempt for one another will probably not remain united for long."
Junger contrasts Bowe Bergdahl, whose desertion of his post may have led to the deaths of six other soldiers, with the bankers who gamble trillions of dollars of taxpayer money on blatantly fraudulent more mortgages. Bergdahl got opprobrium, the bankers got a pass.
The book ends, rather abruptly, with the story of a Korean War veteran who asked his employees to take a pay cut and went without pay himself in order to keep company in business. It was at the time when bankers like Robert Rubin were taking multimillion dollar bonuses for bank profits realized by fraudulent activity.
Last two sentences of the book: that sense of solidarity is at the core of what it means to be human and undoubtedly helped deliver us to this extraordinary moment in our history. It may also be the only thing that allows us to survive it."
Please note I am of Seneca ancestry. People may consider me biased, but I do not believe I am. I am not a tribal member due to matrilineal tribal laws and that is ok for I respect Seneca tribal laws.
This book isn’t just for military member, but anyone who wants to better understand our psyche.
Top reviews from other countries

If you have liked books by Robert Wright, Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt, or Jared Diamond, you will like this.

It’s not a long book, 138 pages, but he covers a lovely story about community, the need for home and the need for belonging.


