There's a wonderful book called My Brother's Keeper, which is about American pilots who went to Israel to fly the early planes of the Israeli Air Force in 1948. And these were people who had just been in war three years before. Now they're 60, 70 year old men and their answer is, you know, well, Jewish identity, I want to do something for Jewish people. But part of it was they missed it. They missed risking their lives. It's just hard for us to understand it.
Journalist and author Sebastian Junger talks about his book Tribe with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Junger explores the human need to be needed and the challenges facing many individuals in modern society who struggle to connect with others. His studies of communal connection include soldiers in a small combat unit and American Indian society in the nineteenth century.