Steven Pressfield

At Thermopylae, a rocky mountain pass in northern Greece, the feared and admired Spartan soldiers stood three hundred strong. Theirs was a suicide mission, to hold the pass against the invading millions of the mighty Persian army. Day after bloody day they withstood the terrible onslaught, buying time for the Greeks to rally their forces. Born into a cult of spiritual courage, physical endurance, and unmatched battle skill, the Spartans would be remembered...

In words that might have been ripped from today's combat dispatches, Pressfield, novelist of ancient warfare, returns with a recreation of Alexander the Great's invasion of the Afghan kingdoms in 330 B.C., a campaign that eerily foreshadows the tactics, terrors, and frustrations of contemporary conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Narrated by Matthias, a young infantryman in Alexander's army, this book explores the challenges, both military and moral,...

As commander on land & sea, Alcibiades was never defeated. Kinsman of Pericles, protégé of Socrates, the warrior was renowned as the most brilliant & charismatic personality of his day, as--fearlessly ambitious, politically ruthless--he forever altered Athens' destiny. During the twenty-seven-year Peloponnesian War, he swept from victory to victory, seemingly invincible. And then, in a shattering twist of fortune, he tumbled from glory. Recounted...

In a near-future world in which governments and corporations are forced to hire cutting-edge mercenary armies to protect their wealth, the globe's largest private military launches a campaign to take over the United States.

"From the bestselling author of Gates of Fire comes an historical epic about the early years of the Roman Empire. A Man at Arms is a Western set in Jerusalem and the Sinai desert in the first century AD, a few years after the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. The villains are the Romans. They're in pursuit of a courier bearing an incendiary letter from Paul the Apostle. For agents of Rome, this letter represents an existential threat that will propagate...

Are you losing your "war of art"? Are you being defeated by a tendency to procrastination, self-doubt, fear, distraction, and perfectionism? Are you self-sabotaging your loftiest artistic entrepreneurial dreams? The antidote is in nine words: PUT YOUR ASS WHERE YOUR HEART WANTS TO BE. Can you shift your artistic identity-your "ass"-from the shallow, fearful, superficial Ego to the wise, loving fearless Self? Can you commit to your dream for the...

"In this powerful, straight-from-the-hip examination of the internal obstacles to success, bestselling author Steven Pressfield shows readers how to identify, defeat, and unlock the inner barriers to creativity. The War of Art is an inspirational, funny, well-aimed kick in the pants guaranteed to galvanize every would-be artist, visionary, or entrepreneur." --from back cover.

The enemy is not lack of preparation, the difficulty of the project, the state of the marketplace, or the emptiness of one's bank account. The enemy is resistance in the brain, and if readers give it so much as a nanosecond, they will start producing excuses, alibis, transparent self-justifications, and a million reasons why they can't, shouldn't, or won't do what they know they need to do.