How writer Sebastian Junger came face-to-face with his mortality

Sebastian Junger has had a lifelong attraction to “extreme situations and people at the edge of things.” He’s an award-winning and best-selling author, journalist and filmmaker known for his coverage of infantrymen on the front lines of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. His book, The Perfect Storm, chronicled the ill-fated journey of a group of fishermen lost at sea.

While Junger has seen danger and death up close, none of that prepared him for the medical crisis that nearly killed him four years ago. As he lay near death at the hospital, his dead father appeared to him, beckoning Junger to join him in what felt like a black pit.

Sebastian Junger’s new book, In My Time of Dying, is a meditation on mortality including his attempts to explain the inexplicable, the common themes running through near death experiences and what it means to live again after nearly dying.

While no one likes to talk about death and dying, Sebastian Junger offers us rare insights into our inevitable fate.