Tribe

Completion Date: Friday, November 13th, 2020
Goodreads Challenge: Book #57 of 2020 

When last I read Sebastian Junger’s writing, he was being touted as the next Hemingway. It was 1997 and The Perfect Storm was all the rage among the men in my circle. So I did what I’ve often done, I read the book before they could finish it and was ready to talk. As it turned out, most were content to wait for the movie, including my then boyfriend. The boyfriend didn’t make it to 2000, but Cloony and the Andrea Gail did Junger’s book a decent rendering, though as always, I preferred the book. 

Fast forward to a night a couple weeks back when I was scanning the Kindle store for new offerings and happened upon Tribe. It was among my recommended readings because I’d recently read Humankind by Rutger Bregman and Sapiens by Yuval Harari and this new offering from Junger fell into a similar category. 

Junger does the topic service with his usual journalistic approach to storytelling. It is well done and speaks to the issues of our loneliness and separation from community. In that regard, like Humankind, it is a reminder to me that I am a person made for friendship and tribe. We all are. No matter how difficult it is to make these connections, no matter how much of an outsider we feel, we all need community. 

Since leaving church and moving halfway around the world to live in two very different (but fairly isolating) countries, I have found community hard to come by. So much so that church has been a temptation…but I’m not that desperate. Yet. 

If I have to choose, I prefer Humankind, but Tribe is worth the read if this sort of philosophy and musings is as interesting to you as it is to me.