Junger offers an intense account of his time embedded with the men of the Second Platoon of Battle Company in Afghanistan. For those who haven't experienced combat and never will, there's little to do but marvel at the courage of the men he describes and the unflinching glimpse he offers us into their lives.

Sebastian Junger's "War" is based on his experiences following a single American Infantry platoon in Eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border for Vanity Fair magazine, done in 5 trips to Afghanistan over a period of 15 months. Junger's book is an observation and a contemplation, in which he describes a group of young men who find themselves at the outward edges of a war, becoming more cohesive with every firefight, but inevitably slipping away from any semblance of what society considers "normal". It is also an often fascinating social and psychological study of group dynamics, in which all purpose for being in the end boils down to the protection and preservation of the collective. Evoking both Michael Herr's writings on the Vietnam war and maybe just a bit of Sgt.Rock, "War" is a fascinating and thoughtful work that had me stopping to ponder and nodding in agreement.

I like the way Sebastian Junger writes. It is a mixture of scientific observation with deep emotional understanding. The book provides unedited insight into the realities of American ground soldiers in one isolated valley deep in Afghanistan.

Excellent read for anyone interested in the psychology of how and why soldiers go about their business. Title should really be Combat, since war has so many layers of political, social, cultural implications. Junger writes as a journalist, deeply embedded in the lives of American soldiers in the front lines of the Afghanistan war, in a remote valley on the Pakistan border. The prose is clean, clear, compelling and thoroughly convincing. This book will become a classic.

I suspect the associated movie 'Restrepo' would have greater impact, but the book does provide insight into that horrible war over in Afghanistan

This book should be considered one of the classic studies of men at war. Most importantly, it gives a revealing picture of the experience of combat at the grunt's level in the 21st century.