SOURCE: "The Same Cruel Life," in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4920, July 18, 1997, p. 8.

[In the following review, Sutherland calls Junger's The Perfect Storm "a fine and moving book, which deserves to succeed."]

Sebastian Junger's publishers describe him as "a writer and adventurer". That is not, one suspects, exactly what he enters under "occupation" on his IRS tax forms, but it creates the necessary authorial bona fides for "A True Story of Men against the Sea". A Perfect Storm is, we are informed, the culmination of the author's lifelong interest in men in extreme circumstances, "out beyond where society can help them". Junger himself apparently used to earn a manly living as a climber for tree-removal companies, "scaling 100-foot trees and taking them down section by section with ropes and a chainsaw". Injury turned him to a more benign assault on the world's forests. A Perfect Storm, his first book...