As with The Perfect Storm, Junger's 1997 best seller about a fishing boat disaster, it blends the specific and general. A sweeping picture emerges from a mosaic of close-ups. ...

His account may not convert supporters or opponents of the war, but it should fuel doubts on both sides and anyone in between.

At its best, War vividly documents the individual costs, which, he argues, need to be acknowledged ...

With his narrative gifts and vivid prose -- as free, thank God, of literary posturing as it is of war-correspondent chest-thumping -- Junger masterfully chronicles the platoon's 15-month tour of duty. But what elevates "War" out of its particular time and place are the author's meditations on the minds and emotions of the soldiers with whom he has shared hardships, dangers and spells of boredom so intense that everyone sits around wishing to hell something would happen (and wishes to God it was over when, inevitably, it does).

Sebastian Junger, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of “The Perfect Storm,” spent months shadowing an American infantry platoon deployed in the valley between 2007 and 2008. The result is “War,” his absorbing and original if sometimes uneven account of his time there. ...

He uses the platoon (the second of Battle Company, part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade) as a kind of laboratory to examine the human condition as it evolved under the extraordinary circumstances in which these soldiers fought and lived. And what a laboratory it is. ...

...Junger uses the soldiers' experiences to briefly explore several asides that help illustrate their lives on the front lines of war. We learn about the treatment of wounds by combat medics, the numerous studies done by the Army and others during the past several decades to understand how soldiers function under fire, the glue of brotherhood — and it is nothing less than love — that gives fighting units courage and holds them together, the toll that "the steady adrenaline of heavy combat" takes on some soldiers.

These asides broaden a narrative that otherwise is so tightly focused that any larger view of the war in Afghanistan goes unmentioned. Then again, as Junger writes, "The moral basis of the war doesn't seem to interest soldiers much, and its long-term success or failure has a relevance of almost zero u2026 they generally leave the big picture to others."...