The book was good, and if it was a standalone I think it would be better. However, basically everything that he said in this book (and much more) was covered in his earlier and better book, The War of Art. I recall multiple exact examples and stories from this book that he used in his prior book,...
Steven Pressfield's books (non-fiction at least) are like old best friends -- always there for you, call it like it is, and tell you what you need (not want) to hear.Pressfield has an incredible way of calling things by their name -- complicated things that feel so hard to pin point, define, and ...
Steven Pressfield presents ideas as related to the Warrior mentality, but mostly with references to Sparta. It is a fast read - only 90 pages, and it does offer a great jump-off point. However, it falls short in that it really just delineates a hand full of ideas without ever getting into too m...
I new him from Gates of Fire and Bagger Vance. This was a dissappointment. I was in the military and really thought he was a press guy for the military, the way he delivered this bookwas as if he were writing a book report for junior high english in which he would recieve extra credit for jargon ...
While reading Steven Pressfield's latest novel, "The Profession," I kept thinking of a photo posted on his website of several American soldiers serving in the Middle East, all stretched out on their bedrolls, each of them with their noses buried in Pressfield's magnificent "Gates of Fire." The me...
The qualities of a good battle squire are simple enough. He must be dumb as a mule, numb as a post and obedient as an imbecile. In these qualifications, Xeones of Astakos, I declare your credentials impeccable.This is how Xeones, one of the main characters of the book, is described at some time i...
This is about a soldier in the time of Alexander the Great of Macedon, around 330 BC. Alexander the Great has conquered everywhere using standard tactics of drawing out his enemy and defeating it on the battlefield. And he has conquered the Persian empire, the greatest in the world. And, on the w...
I get specific so I’ll put this under a spoiler. The short version is, I took quite a dislike to Alexander as here portrayed - he wasn’t a hero-figure for me. I thought, from an Alexander novel, what I want is a hero figure. But this turned out to quite interest me, with its ambivalence. I’d like...
The story is framed by Grandfather Jason's narration. His grandson asks who he thinks is the noblest of the Greeks. "Alcibiades," Grandfather answers immediately. Grandson asks who he thinks is his 'most unforgettable character'. "Polemides, the son of Nicias...the man who assassinated Alcib...
I really liked this one. It's one of the better Steven Pressfield books thatI've read. There is an "author's note." which is a feature I like in historical fiction. The author explains the historical basis for the story and more or less establishes the historical baseline from which he extrapo...
Holden Caulfield would love this, as would Ernest Hemingway. HC had it in for the phonies, and Pressfield has no use for them, either. Only he's met the enemy and it is himself. And you, gentle reader, need only a mirror to find your enemy. Pressfield calls it "Resistance," and it lurks in all of...
I’ve been told that my book Gabriel’s Creek reminded some readers of The Legend of Bagger Vance. I always took that to be high praise, even though I’d seen the film adaptation but never read Steven Pressfield’s book. I understand many of those comparisons now. Among the most notable is that in bo...
A Novel. Pressfield extends his talents to the modern world with a World War II tale based on the real-life exploits of the Longe Range Desert Group, an elite British special forces unit that took on the German Afrika Korps and its legendary commander, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the "Desert Fox."
Because Resistance is a bully. Resistance has no strength of its own; its power derives entirely from our fear of it. A bully will back down before the runtiest twerp who stands his ground. The essence of professionalism is the focus upon the work and its demands, while we are doing it, to the ex...
“Look what crawled in through the bunghole.” He was pointing to the knoll behind the Arkadian camp, where deserters from the Persian lines were being interrogated beside the watch fires. I squinted but my eyes refused to focus. “Look again,” he said. “It’s your seditious mate, Rooster. He’s askin...
I rode the whole way on my Burke Lightning in under twenty minutes, despite ruts and washouts, no lights and a regular gauntlet of coon hounds and croppers’ mutts that took after me at every fence line. It got spookier out toward Junah’s, for his property began nearly half a mile east of the gate...
South over the mountains lie Syria and her capital, Damascus; then Phoenicia and Palestine, Arabia and Egypt. East by the Royal Road awaits the breadbasket of the empire—Mesopotamia, the “Land Between the Rivers,” the Tigris and Euphrates, and the imperial cities of Babylon and Susa. The seaboard...