Rating: 
Summary: Salty-seaspray tasting reality
Review: For all my years growing up in New England (Point Judith, R.I.) the guys I knew that worked on these boats were God-like in their presence to repeatedly challenge the sea and demon-like in their whirlwind partying-drinking-fighting once back on terrafirma. This book describes my friends to a tee... the horrific storm we experienced onshore could not have possibly compared to the tempest that existed out 1200 miles in an environment wide open to the raw power of Mother Nature. For those of us that read this book, our appreciation of these characters that dutifully go to sea, harvest the finest food on the planet and pay dearly with their lives in periodic instances such as this will never be sufficient. Wake up you landlubbers, these are the last of the truly wild men of earth!
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Summary: Intense, lip biting, bad dreams, excellent reading!!!
Review: I missed my bus stop on the way home from work. My wife and two-year old son were calling me to no avail. I read it in 2 days!!
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read!
Review: Wow! This book will take you for a ride. You'll never look at the sea the same way again.
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Summary: Truly incredible book--Mother Nature at her worst!!
Review: Other people I knew had recommended this book to me. The book started out kinda slow. I'll admit that I put it down 2x before I finally got into it. But once you get past the first 40 pages of background...IT TAKES OFF!! It grabs you and it doesn't let you go. You can't believe what went on in that storm...its the stuff of horror stories, but it was all true!! It lodged a lump in my throat until I finished the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Journalistic techniques are OK, but too many errors.
Review: Junger uses the present voice practically throughout the book, a standard journalistic technique that lends immediacy to actions that occurred in the past. The result is a fast-paced book in the micro sense, but he takes too long to get into the action. The construction of the book is difficult to figure out...is the subject the storm? the people on the Andrea Gail? everybody who was out there? My disappointment is much greater, however, in the lack of copyediting. Junger, at least three times, says that the Andrea Gail "steams," when she is diesel-powered; and on page 205 of the hard-cover edition are five whopping errors that anybody who lives in the Boston area should have caught: the Pilgrim Nuclear Plant is in Plymouth, MA (or did he mean the Seabrook Nuclear Plant in New Hampshire?); it is "Hough's," not "Haugh's" Neck, part of Quincy; the Isles of Shoals are off New Hampshire, not Maine; it's "Boone Island," not "Bo! one's," and the town in Massachusetts is "Scituate," not "Situate." Wow! All this on one page! For me, errors like this cast suspicion on the accuracy of everything else in the book. But it's still well worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Button down the hatches, we're going for a ride
Review: All the adulation this book has gotten certianly is deserving. Anyone with a white collar day job will probably question their integrity and manhood after reading about the abject terror that those who work on the sea must face. I found the ditched helicopter and subsequent rescue attempt the most riviting part of the book. Simply terrifying.
Rating:
Summary: A worthwhile read.
Review: If you want to learn about commercial swordfishing, weather phenomena, and the body mechanics of drowning, then this is the book for you. I found this book incredibly informative as well as a good read. You get an idea as to what it must have been like to face the terrifying power of nature.
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Summary: My ultimate favorite book-EVER!
Review: Growing up in New England, I know a great deal about the sea, so when I picked up this book, I expected a review of what I knew. I was wrong. The first part of the book got me to know these men and their dangerous trade. While the second part just gripped me as some of the best writing I've ever read. This book, as well as others in its genre, show us that mother nature reigns supreme over all of man's technology. A modern classic which I think will stand the test of time.
Rating:
Summary: Buy this book.
Review: My palms were sweating while I turned the pages. Wbile the author's simple, straightforward way of bringing you into an inevitable disaster may be a little too familiar to some people, (i.e. been there, done that, hated it), that's precisely his point. Obviously, the subjects of the book have chosen professions that are a little beyond what most of us would consider average--but not to them. This is the story, though, of their lives and we are carried along as things slip from their world of normality to utter disaster, one step at a time. My one criticism is that photographs and more adequate maps would have helped tie things together for those of us landlocked west of the Mississippi.
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Summary: Natures beauty and nature's fury all in one masterful tale!
Review: The Perfect Strom is a must read. Junger brings you into the world of sword fishing and doesn't let you leave. You not only learn about the ins and the outs of this industry, you are brought into the lives of the people who are an intimate part of it. It's a story about people and a world not known to many of us. You realize that the beauty of nature has a wild and furious side.
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