Sebastian Junger (born January 17, 1962) is an American journalist, author and filmmaker.
He is the author of The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea (1997). He covered the War in Afghanistan for more than a decade The book War (2010) was drawn from his field reporting for Vanity Fair, that also served as the background for the documentary film Restrepo (2010).
Junger was born in Belmont, Massachusetts, the son of Ellen Sinclair, a painter, and Miguel Chapero Junger, a physicist. Born in Dresden, Germany, and of Russian, Austrian, Spanish, Italian, and Jewish descent, his father immigrated to the United States during World War II to escape persecution because of paternal Jewish ancestry, and to study engineering at MIT. Junger grew up in the Belmont neighborhood, which he learned was the territory of the Boston Strangler. He was later inspired to write A Death in Belmont (2006).
Junger graduated from Concord Academy in 1980 and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Wesleyan University in cultural anthropology in 1984. As an accomplished long-distance runner, he spent a summer training on the Navajo Nation reservation and wrote his thesis on Navajo long-distance running and its traditional, pre-Columbian roots.
Junger began working as a freelance writer, often trying to publish articles on topics that interested him.
In 1997, Junger published The Perfect Storm, which was commercially successful.
In 2000 Junger published an article "The Forensics of War," in Vanity Fair. He continues to work there as a contributing editor. In early 2007, he reported from Nigeria on the subject of blood oil. With British photographer Tim Hetherington, Junger created The Other War: Afghanistan, produced with ABC News and Vanity Fair. It was shown on Nightline in September 2008 and the two men shared the DuPont-Columbia Award for broadcast journalism for the work.
His book War (2010) revolves around a platoon of the US Army 173rd Airborne stationed in Afghanistan.
Junger, along with Hetherington, used material gathered in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan for the book and to create a related documentary feature Restrepo. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and won the Grand Jury Prize for a domestic documentary at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010.
Junger's book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, was published in 2016.
His latest work Freedom, on the American ideal of the same name, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2021.
In July 2026, 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton announced in an employee memo that Junger would be joining the broadcast as a contributor.
Junger lives in New York City and Cape Cod with his wife and their two children. His first daughter was born in 2016 when he was age 55. Previously, Junger was married to writer Daniela Petrova. They divorced in 2014. He is an atheist.
Junger co-owned a bar in New York City called the Half King. Named after a Seneca warrior who played colonial forces against each other in the Seven Years War, the bar hosted in-house readings and photo exhibits and was favored by war correspondents and conflict photographers. Rising rents made the business unsustainable, and the Half King closed in 2019 after 19 years of operation.
In June 2020, Junger had a near-death experience when his pancreatic artery ruptured while he was at home in Truro, Massachusetts. He has written a book about the experience, titled In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife.
Junger's book The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea (1997) recounts a storm in October 1991 that resulted in the Gloucester fishing boat Andrea Gail going down off the coast of Nova Scotia, and the loss of all six crew members: Billy Tyne, Bobby Shatford, Alfred Pierre, David Sullivan, Michael Moran and Dale Murphy.
In 2000, the book was adapted by Warner Brothers as a film of the same name, starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg. Junger established The Perfect Storm Foundation to provide cultural and educational grants to children across the country whose parents make their living in the commercial fishing industry.
A Death in Belmont centers on the 1963 rape and murder of Bessie Goldberg. This was during the period from 1962 to 1964 of the infamous Boston Strangler crimes. Junger received the 2007 PEN/Winship award for the book. Junger raises the possibility in his book that the real Strangler was Albert DeSalvo. He eventually confessed to committing several Strangler murders, but not Goldberg's. Roy Smith, an African-American man, was convicted in her death based on circumstantial evidence. Junger draws no conclusions about the guilt or innocence of either Smith or DeSalvo. Goldberg's daughter has vigorously disputed Junger's suggestion that Smith may have been innocent. Defense attorney Alan Dershowitz said in his review of the book: It "must be read with the appropriate caution that should surround any work of nonfiction in which the author is seeking a literary or dramatic payoff." He noted that Junger did not include endnotes or footnotes, and suggested he may have had too much interest in "playing down coincidences and emphasizing connections."