Located somewhere on the literary axis between Ernest Hemingway and Truman Capote, Junger is the best-selling author of The Perfect Storm and Death in Belmont.

Junger grew up in suburban New England near the port town depicted in The Perfect Storm. After graduating from Wesleyan, he worked for a tree-removal company before a chainsaw accident convinced him to switch careers. He started writing freelance articles, focusing on, as he put it, people "on the extremes." After his essay "The Storm" appeared in Outside magazine, W.W. Norton offered him a book contract for the full-length version. The Perfect Storm, about a fishing boat and its doomed crew, was published in 1997 to massive commercial success, spending more than 30 weeks on the Times bestseller list; in 2000, it was made into a Wolfgang Peterson-directed film starring Mark Wahlberg and George Clooney. Although he' published several more books, including A Death in Belmont, Fire, and War, none have lit up the bestseller list like The Perfect Storm. He also continues to regularly write for Vanity Fair and the New York Times Magazine covering conflict regions around the world and even branched out into filmmaking with the documentary Restrepo.

The success of The Perfect Storm was somewhat marred by a chorus of critics who called the author's facts into question. Junger admitted there were problems with inaccuracies, saying: "It's my first book, I'm a year late with the manuscript, and that panicked me. I should have, I know now, insisted on a couple more months to double-check everything." [Image via Getty]