Freedom
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4.2 • 68 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A profound rumination on the concept of freedom from the New York Times bestselling author of Tribe.
Throughout history, humans have been driven by the quest for two cherished ideals: community and freedom. The two don’t coexist easily. We value individuality and self-reliance, yet are utterly dependent on community for our most basic needs. In this intricately crafted and thought-provoking book, Sebastian Junger examines the tension that lies at the heart of what it means to be human.
For much of a year, Junger and three friends—a conflict photographer and two Afghan War vets—walked the railroad lines of the East Coast. It was an experiment in personal autonomy, but also in interdependence. Dodging railroad cops, sleeping under bridges, cooking over fires, and drinking from creeks and rivers, the four men forged a unique reliance on one another.
In Freedom, Junger weaves his account of this journey together with primatology and boxing strategy, the history of labor strikes and Apache raiders, the role of women in resistance movements, and the brutal reality of life on the Pennsylvania frontier. Written in exquisite, razor-sharp prose, the result is a powerful examination of the primary desire that defines us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Junger follows Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging with a rambling reflection on the nature of freedom, grounded in a 400-mile hike he made "in segments over the course of a year" from Washington, D.C., to western Pennsylvania. To Junger and his unidentified companions (all told, eight people joined him at different parts of the hike), walking alongside railroad tracks, sleeping under bridges and in abandoned buildings, and dodging cops and security guards felt like something "ancient and hard." His account of their travails (blisters, exhaustion, freezing cold weather) is interspersed with philosophical musings ("the inside joke about freedom... is that you're always trading obedience to one thing with obedience to another"), lyrical nature writing (the water in one Pennsylvania creek "tasted as though civilization was something in the future"), and observations about war, human endurance, and the settling of the American frontier. It's a mixed bag—insights into how the Apaches and the Taliban overcame numerically superior forces brush up against random facts and statistics (people can predict, with 70% accuracy, the outcome of a U.S. senate race "based on a one-second glimpse of the candidates' faces as they campaign"). Ultimately, the journey's lack of purpose (only near the end of the book does Junger acknowledge that he was going through a divorce at the time) mirrors the book's lack of focus. The result feels more self-indulgent than illuminating.
Customer Reviews
Freedom
Phenomenal writing
A challenge to follow author’s train of thought
The author is all over the place with his disjointed diatribes on One of the most potent attractions of a mass movement is its offering a substitute for individual hope,” he writes. “There is an apparent connection between dissatisfaction with oneself and a proneness to credulity. The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic.” listening to an intoxicated, or possibly mentally ill , person prattle on endlessly..He does occasionally mention the word freedom which sends him on yet another long winded treatise on ancient history, cultures, atrocities committed by certain groups etc., while leaving out those committed by other hypersensitive groups, no doubt to avoid retribution by same. Some of these ramblings actually have something to do with the meaning of the word freedom but it’s vague and must be searched out..
Not a spiritual man, he definitely holds religion in low regard and seems to be a thinly-veiled socialist.