Rating: 
Summary: Awesome Book
Review: Ok so maybe the title was a bit misleading, but hey there were some really cool chapters in this book. Sebastian Junger is an excellent author and provides beautiful insight into places that some people may never see. I am not what you would call an avid reader. If it doesnt have pictures I probably won't pick it up. But Sebastian Junger's informative yet wildly fascinating anecdotes capture my imagination. When reading this book, I barely noticed the fact that I was learning and reading at the same time. I roared through this book at a speed-addict pace, and that is saying alot considering it takes me months to get through most books. All in all, it was an enjoyable read, and even though you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, the flames are quite eye catching.
Rating: 
Summary: Cutting Edge
Review: Sebastian Junger (author of "The Perfect Storm") has assembled a fine set of previously published essays with the common theme of supreme peril, the "amoral awe" we experience when we are present and part of an overwhelming experience that is shot through with paralyzing danger.The title "Fire" is misleading (or it was to me.) He does include two essays out of ten on fighting wildfires in National Parks, but the other eight take up war zones and, what I would call, extreme hazardous journalistic duty. Mr. Junger has a compelling voice and a you-are-there style that places you firmly in Sierra Leone, Kosovo and Kashmir. The strongest and most compelling essay was the last, "Lion in Winter" a sketch of Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, who was assassinated two days before the World Trade Center tragedy, probably by the same group of terrorists. The essay was written early in 2001, and is worth preserving. The author was clearly impressed with this great non-political general. Massoud was directly responsible for the misery caused the Soviets in their futile ten-year attempt to subdue Afghanistan. Mr. Junger catches Massoud at ease, but still issuing orders even as he gave his interview. It is a disaster that this strong, brilliant leader is no longer present to take part if and when Afghanistan recovers. This is an excellent book that captures the moment, mood, time and countries as indelibly as a photo. Recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Fire is more of a fizzle
Review: Sebastian Junger wrote The Perfect Storm, which was one of the best books of the '90s. He's tried to follow that up with Fire, but unfortunately this book falls way short of the previous one, for several reasons. For one thing, Fire is only partially about an actual fire. What the author has apparently done is taken articles he wrote at various times, and just laid them into this book. The first two articles are about fire-fighting in the early nineties, and most (but not all) of the rest of the articles cover war around the world, mostly in the Balkans. The last two deal with Afghanistan. The articles on firefighting are interesting, but Junger's ablities as a war correspondent are only marginal. There are numerous references to machineguns when he presumably means assault rifles, for instance, and his understanding of what's happening appears to be only so-so. The articles are arranged strictly in chronological order, so that whatever action holds them together (if there are two on the same region) is usually lost. The best of the pieces, to my mind, covers the silly partition of the isle of Cyprus between Turks and Greeks, co-written with another journalist. I'm sure Junger has another good book in him, maybe more. This isn't it---this isn't a book really, it's just a collection of articles he wrote.
Rating:
Summary: Solid journalism
Review: Sebastian Junger's book "Fire" is getting a lot of attention these days becasue of Junger's visit to Afghanistan in November 2000, and his visit with the military leader of the Northern Alliance, who has since been assassinated. This section, however, is only one chapter in a book that is a collection of diverse stories ranging from reportage on Western U.S. wildfires to the battlefields of Kosovo and Sierra Leonne. Junger is a good reporter and an excellent writer who knows how to make his stories come alive for the reader. He originally conceived a book in which he would report on the most dangerous jobs in the world, hence the first two chapters on Western firefighters and the third on a traditional whale hunter. Junger then discovered he had a knack as a foreign correspondent and ventured into some of the world's war zones. With all of his stories, Junger provides valuable insight for the reader, especially in his reporting on the long standing division of Cyprus, which he co-authored with another journalist. The only drawback is that Junger's pieces are the original magazine articles and are not expanded upon for the book. The focus of each article also tends to be very narrow, especially in the foreign pieces. Junger lacks the depth of master correspondent like Thomas Friedman, and the book is fairly slight at just over 220 pages. Nevertheless, he is a skilled writer, and this makes for excellent and informative reading.
Rating:
Summary: Review of Sebastian Junger's Fire
Review: Sebastian Junger's fascination with dangerous lines of work and "people confronting situations that could easily destroy them" (Fire, xvii) brought him wide fame and notoriety with the story of the Gloucester swordfishing boat, the Andrea Gail, in magazine articles and then The Perfect Storm, his bestselling first book. However, his desire to find people in these situations (and, in a sense, an attempt to describe his own reasons for being in those situations) is the underlying theme of his new book, a collection of excellent magazine articles and other short works called Fire. Coincidentally so is the name of the first piece, an essay about forest firefighting in general and the efforts at the Flicker Creek fire, one of many non-descript fires Mr. Junger covered, in 1992. It's a particularly good piece about the hazards of fighting forest fires, the techniques and terminology used, some history, and most of all the various groups of people that do the actual fighting. One of Mr. Junger's first articles (though there is no credit as to where it was published, if anywhere), "Fire" serves as a nice introduction, thematically and stylistically, for the rest of the book. Another article deals with the fire at Storm King Mountain, which killed twelve firefighters in 1994 and is very similarly themed. Following that is the bulk of the book, a series of articles concerning war and conflict in all its misery; Mr. Junger covers the Kashmir, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Cyprus, and finally, in two very telling pieces, Afghanistan (before and after September 11, 2001). Interspersed are two articles, one dealing with one of the last Caribbean whale hunters (which doesn't sound particularly dangerous these days but remember the story of the ramming and destruction of the whaleship Essex and the novel it inspired, Moby Dick) and John Colter, an early 19th century fur trapper/frontiersmen and the quest for, lacking a better term, adventure. Mr. Junger engages the reader in an easy yet realistic prose that is absorbable and mesmerizing at the same time. Occasionally, given similar subject matter (the two articles on forest firefighters and Afghanistan, for instance) he unintentionally repeats himself, which can be annoying, but cannot be helped. However, each of the articles tell their own unique, wrapped story that leaves the reader wanting to more, wanting to know what happened after the writing stopped. Some, like "Escape from Kashmir" end in a lucky escape attempt and mystery, while others, like "The Terror of Sierra Leone" and "Dispatches from a Dead War," end in everlasting misery of unending conflict and hatred. In the end, Mr. Junger's search for dangerous situations and occupations puts him in the very same situations, acting for the most part as a war correspondent and writer. Sometimes it just makes one wish they'd never encountered it, such as Mr. Junger's vivid description of coming under a Taliban artillery bombardment on an Afghani hilltop: "There was nothing exciting about it, nothing even abstractly interesting. It was purely, exclusively bad." (Fire, 207) Yet Mr. Junger returned; in late 2001 he followed the fighters of the Northern Alliance as they attacked and swept through the Taliban, into Kabul. Why? Mr. Junger never says, though the excuse that it was a job was probably valid. However, it could be that he probably would not want to be anywhere else - and that, beyond any other motive, is really the sole truth behind the men and women of Fire.
Rating:
Summary: Hairy-Chested Machismo
Review: The "Perfect Storm" was such a powerful, compelling read that Sebastian Junger's fans are probably a little disappointed with his next effort, "Fire" a compilation of previously published essays written throughout the nineties. But that disappointment aside, there are some real gems here. Junger puts himself in harm 's way to tell a good story. Whether joining a fire fighting crew in the Rockies, being dropped in Kosovo's Valley of Death, dodging drug-crazed and armed teenagers in Sierra Leone, or interviewing a rebel leader in pre-September 11 Afghanistan, Junger searches out the off-beat, but important story. And yet my favorite of the essays is the quietest: an examination of how the Greeks and Turks in divided Cyprus have, unwittingly and unwillingly, reached a sort of peace that may last. For all his chest-thumping, Junger is a thoughtful and talented writer. Though I, too, await a hoped-for longer treatment of some theme or event, these essays are a very satisfying interlude.
Rating:
Summary: Great compilation of adventure tales
Review: The latest book by Junger is a compilation of his `adventure' writing. He details life at the extremes from smoke jumping to Kosovo to the `last whaler'. A wonderful book he tells not only of his own personal accounts in Kosovo, Cyprus and fighting Fire in Idaho. He also tells the tale of the Storm King Mountain fire where many firefighters perished. One chapter details the life of a `mountain man' and another details the life of a French colonial native who is the `last whaler' to hunt in a small boat with a harpoon. By far the most memorable and life changing chapter is the one that details the story of foreign hikers kidnapped in Kashmir by Islamic militants. This chapter tells the story of a Mr. Childs who, although the weakest of the hikers, manages a daring escape. This story is a moral for humanity and the book would be complete if it only included this wonderful tale of the choice of survival showing that man should never resign himself to fate but should always strive to resist. This is a wonderful book, very accessible and each chapter is almost totally self contained which makes it easy to skip back and forth searching for what suits your fancy.
Rating:
Summary: Great stories, but no common thread
Review: This book is a collection of Junger's essays written as a journalist. While the cover art and the title might suggest that this book is about firefighting, only the first two stories are about forest fires. Junger writes clearly, and his stories are informative and easy to read. Each of these stories provides a wealth of relevant background and history that adds a great deal of depth to the issue. With the exception of the forest fire stories and one other, the remaining stories describe the conditions and background of a number of remote conflicts from around the war. These stories try to explain some of the causes and effects of these brutal wars, and generally succeed in shedding some small light on these situations.
However, while the individual stories are each well written and and stand well on their own, the book itself isn't as well put-together. I kept looking for the common thread or theme that tied all these stories together, and in the end, I don't feel that these stories add up to any kind of coherent whole. The only commonality seems to be that they were written by Junger and that they reflect his travels and experiences as a journalist. Perhaps some additional introductory or bridging material elaborating on the impact these experiences had on the author would tie this material together better. Or perhaps not. In any case, while the individual stories each had something meaningful to offer, the book, as a whole, really doesn't offer anything above and beyond them.
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