Fire

Rating:
Summary: Surface reporting - at best
Review: Sebastian Jungar really sold me on a Perfect Storm due to his in-depth and remarkably interesting reporting, therefore I eagerly read Fire. His previously demonstrated ability to move out of the way and let the stories tell themselves is completely lacking in fire. For such a talented writer this book left me very disapointed, but more it left me feeling used and abused by a misleading title (the content is much more than "Fire") and worse by the way the chapters flow together like short, disjointed articles, rather than building towards a central theme. The books seems distressingly like an atempt to showcase Mr Jungar rather than a writer interacting with the reader on subjects of real interest. Proof that the most interesting subjects can be ruined.

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 Means Adventure or Danger
Review: Sebastian Junger called this book Fire, but a more appropriate title would be Danger. These are the stories of men, and a few women, and the adventures they had either running towards or away from danger. The first two chapters use what can be called the classic Junger formula...the science and history of an outburst of nature, and the sociology of those who try to make a living conquering the unconquerable, in this case the firestorms of the western forests.

This book shows that Junger's heart really lies in playing the role of war correspondent. He takes us right up to the battle lines of places in the news such as Kashmir, Kosovo, and Sierra Leone. If you stick with his stories of man's inhumanity to man, the last story will knock you over. The Lion in Winter finds Junger pinned down by the Taliban rocket fire in early 2001 side-by-side with the Afghan guerrilla fighter, Ahmad Shah Massoud. One can't help wonder if subsequent printings of Fire will contain an addendum on his thoughts of this adventure in light of 9/11.

Junger should also revisit expanding his stories on Fire and on Whaling. His fans of A Perfect Storm are looking for more of his writing using his signature blueprint for best- seller success, only a taste of which you will find between the covers of Fire.

Rating:
Summary: Wrong Title, Wrong Cover, Right Author
Review: Sebastian Junger is a craftsman of repute. With honed words and dispassionate facts, he takes us into the drama and horror of situations around the globe. His skill is apparent through each chapter of this book. In the beginning, he tells us that he started his previous book "The Perfect Storm" intending to write of dangerous professions around the world, not just that of commercial fishermen. In "Fire" he gives us insight into more than one dangerous occupation; thus, the book might be more aptly titled "Danger Zones."

"Fire," however, falls short of its billing. The title and cover lend one to believe Junger will follow the lives of a fire crew battling a blaze, as he did with commercial fishermen facing "The Perfect Storm." But this book is actually old news. The chapters are reprinted articles (some outdated in information and some redundant in their research). The scenes are vivid and full of engrossing detail, yet lose some of their power in the retelling and in the disjointed stitching of mismatched pieces. I felt that his chapter "Colter's Way" would've made a nice lead up to the more current stories, and his chapter about his own boyhood brush with danger could've set the book's pace with a personal touch. Instead, "Fire" broke out in too many places and I lost my zeal to keep reading. Halfway through, I had to consciously choose to continue. I hope Junger brings us some fresh stuff next time around. Until then, I'm feeling only lukewarm.

Rating:
Summary: Stalls midway through
Review: Sebastian Junger starts off strong with "Fire," a book one comes to find is not devoted exclusively to the title subject.

The initial essays are great, riveting even. The later ones, about his journalistic trevails abroad... well ... I'm stalled midway through them.

I wish the author had been as compelled with the subject matter of "Fire" as he was with the plight of the Andrea Gail in "A Perfect Storm."

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: Junger brings us to the front lines.
Review: The author of "The Perfect Storm," Sebastian Junger once again brings the reader into a story even though the content is based on a series of fact-based articles. This book is poignant and timely for a variety of reasons.

"Fire," the title story, highlights the efforts of firefighters in their battle against the raging forest fires in the Western U.S. But, this book covers much, much more. Each "essay" is a tribute to people confronting life-threatening situations in an unabashed manner. Junger's reports and ability to delve into the core of each situation is equally unabashed and brilliant.

Other than shining the light on the dynamic spirit of firefighters, perhaps the most interesting and timely profile is that of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the anti-Taliban guerrilla leader. Prior to the heinous September 11 attacks on the U.S., Massoud was assasinated presumably by bin Laden-led terrorists. With great flair for detail and an uncanny ability to bring a character to life, Junger describes the courage and stature of Massoud, the "Lion of Panjshir." A phrase that sticks in my mind from this essay and one highlighting Junger's talent for storytelling, he describes Massoud in the following fashion--"He was not tall, but he stood as if he were."

While each essay is compelling and exciting (for non-fiction-type depiction), there is something slightly disjointed about a mutliple essay-based book. This is the ONLY reason this book did not receive 5 stars in my opinion. Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable read.