An Evening With Sebastian Junger & Bryan Christy: On Freedom

Sebastian Junger is author of the New York Times bestseller Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, War, A Death in Belmont, Fire, and The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea, and co-director of the documentary film Restrepo, nominated for an Academy Award. He is also the winner of a Peabody Award and the National Magazine Award for reporting. Throughout history, humans have been driven by the quest for two cherished ideals: community and freedom, yet the two don’t easily coexist. We value individuality and self-reliance, but are utterly dependent on community for our most basic needs. In Freedom (Simon & Schuster), Junger examines the tension that lies at the heart of that conflict. For much of a year, he and three friends – a conflict photographer and two Afghan War vets – walked the railroad lines of the East Coast. It was an experiment in personal autonomy, but also in interdependence. Dodging railroad cops, sleeping under bridges, cooking over fires, and drinking from creeks and rivers, the four men forged a unique reliance on one another. Junger’s account of this journey offers a powerful examination of the primary desires that define us. The New York Post called it a “fascinating look at freedom and community.”

Bryan Christy is the founder and former head of special investigations at National Geographic, a National Geographic Society “Rolex Explorer of the Year,” and the author of the nonfiction book The Lizard King. His international criminal investigations have been the subject of two award-winning National Geographic documentaries and have led to police raids on Vatican City, the defrocking of a pedophile monsignor, the arrest and imprisonment of the “Pablo Escobar of wildlife trafficking,” and the closing of China’s ivory market. His crime writing has been anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing. Christy’s education includes Penn State, Cornell’s FALCON Program, University of Michigan Law School, Tokyo University Law School, and time at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In his fiction debut, In the Company of Killers (G.P. Putnam’s Sons), Christy introduces Tom Klay, an investigative reporter leading a double life as a CIA spy. But while on assignment in Kenya, Klay is attacked, and his closest friend is murdered. Soon, his carefully constructed double life unravels. The agency has helped Klay before, but this time, help is slower to come, and the deeper he digs, the more he realizes that everything he thought he knew about his work may have been a lie. The New York Times called him “Immensely talented … Christy’s muscular, vivid writing and John le Carré-esque talent for thrusting us deep into unfamiliar territory ensure that what could lapse into cliché instead sounds fresh and exciting.”