Junger makes an effort to frame their project—'a 300-mile conversation about war' and why it’s so hard to come home—which is more or less what happens in the film. That’s not what happens in the book. Here, we pass through countryside, nearly all of it in south-central Pennsylvania, and don’t hear a word from anyone till the second half. Freedom has a different purpose, a frame far less explicit.

... an odd, rambling book that doesn't really arrive at a conclusion, and at times seems unsure what questions it's asking in the first place.

Journalist and filmmaker Junger returns to the fertile ground of male camaraderie and the pushing of limits.

The narrative spine of the book is Junger’s progress along the route, in whose course he gives us richly detailed descriptions of landscape, camp sites, railroad infrastructure, and rumbling freight trains.

Each part is engaging, entertaining, and enlightening. But the whole doesn’t offer a coherent experience: It’s more like three disconnected rambles than a single trip to a fixed destination.

Junger has forged an estimable literary career telling the stories of people in extreme circumstances. His latest...offers a thoughtful, but generally less compelling, experience.

... a rambling reflection on the nature of freedom, grounded in a 400-mile.