Morning Edition, May 11, 2010

Five times between June 2007 and June 2008, the writer Sebastian Junger traveled to a remote Army outpost in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. Junger, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, made the trip to embed with a company of soldiers from the Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade as they fought to keep the Taliban from controlling a small, treacherous plot of land. After he returned, Junger wrote about the experiences of these soldiers in a book that he says attempts to locate exactly what it is about combat that appeals to young men. That book is called, simply, War. And, as Junger points out in it, though war may be a lot of things, it is useless to pretend it's not exciting.