ASCENT FROM CHAOS? AFGHANISTAN’S UNCERTAIN FUTURE
RESTREPO: A VIEW FROM THE TRENCHES OF AFGHANISTAN
Sebastian Junger, Documentarian, Journalist, and Author
For over a year, Sebastian Junger was embedded with a battle company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, in the remote and heavily contested Korengal Valley of eastern Afghanistan. Reporting on the war from the soldiers’ perspective alongside photojournalist Tim Hetherington, who was recently killed while covering the war in Libya, Junger spent weeks at a time at a remote outpost that saw more combat than almost anywhere else in the entire country. The professional result is twofold: his most recent book, WAR, and the Academy Award nominated film for Best Documentary, Restrepo, which also won the 2010 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Please join us for the continuation of our Chicago and the World Forum series, "Ascent from Chaos? Afghanistan’s Uncertain Future," to include a screening of Restrepo followed by a discussion with Junger, where he will share his experiences reporting from Afghanistan.
Sebastian Junger is a journalist and the best-selling author of The Perfect Storm, A Death in Belmont, and Fire. As a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and as a contributor to ABC News, he has covered major international news stories in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and many other places around the globe. He is the recipient of the National Magazine Award and a SAIS Novartis Prize for Journalism. His reporting on Afghanistan in 2000, profiling Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, became the subject of the National Geographic documentary Into the Forbidden Zone. His work has also been published in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, and Men’s Journal. Junger received his B.A. from Wesleyan University.
Junger’s latest book, WAR, will be available for purchase and signing following the program.
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