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Title: Excellent in surprising ways.
Review: Junger's book ends up being fascinating for many different reasons, despite its weird structure. It starts out as the tale of one fishing boat caught in the "perfect storm", but since no one lived to tell the story of that boat, much of the excitement of the story comes from his patching together other stories. Besides, for the most part, the lives of the fishermen and those they lived with on land are less than compelling because these are ordinary rather than exceptional people. By far the best and most compelling writing in the book is about the Air National Guard helicopter that goes down after a rescue attempt. Other interesting segments of the book deal with the basic mechanics of long-line fishing (i.e., how it is done today), the mechanics of drowning, and meteorology. Junger has strung together a variety of almost stand alone chapters, but the end result still for the most part captivates one's attention.
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