DWD's Reviews

Accurate, textured historical fiction that just failed to do it for me Steven Pressfield Before I get started let me say that I liked The Legend of Bagger Vance absolutely loved Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae . Pressfield is a master of Greek battle scenes, especially from the point of view of the grunt footsoldier in the middle of their deadly scrums. Pressfield's mastery of battlefield scenes happily continues in Tides of War: A Novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War . His descriptions of the Athenian campaign against Syracuse was as good as anything in "Gates of Fire". But, in between there was so much speech-making, reminiscing and quotes from Greek literature that I felt like I was having to slog through it all. On top of it all, the map of "Greece and the Aegean" in the front was insufficient, only listing some of the places mentioned in the book so that one had to guess where they were off to (or loo...

'It's not about golf,' said the student to this teacher. Steven Pressfield The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life was on the shelf in my classroom. I hadn't read it yet and was discussing it with one of my students who was looking for something to read. I had suggested it to him since he is a fan of many sports. He said he'd already read it. I told him I had not, since I am not a fan of golf. He looked at me like I was a small, silly child and said, 'It's not about golf.' At that moment, I determined to read this book. So, this was my first free choice of a book this summer and I enjoyed it. First things first. You do not have to understand golf to understand the book. The golf match is merely the vehicle to move the story forward. When Bagger Vance encourages his pupil to find his 'authentic swing' I simply inserted my own experiences with baseball to understand the feeling. Secondly, the book ...

A cautionary tale buried inside some first-rate action. Published in 2012 by Crown. The Profession is a near-future sci-fi action-adventure tale with a great deal of political analysis and some history tossed in as well. Set in the year 2032, the world has become a different place, but not at all unrecognizable. The chaos in the Middle East still reigns supreme on the international scene because oil is still king ($8/gallon gasoline is threatening to collapse America's economy). Iran and Iraq are still fighting, terrorism still exist, the oil states in the Middle East are, at the same time, both strong and unstable. The United States is in the middle of an election that seems to be addressing none of the real issues that the country faces and none of the candidates inspire anyone to anything but changing the channel of the television when they appear. Steven Pressfield America is still acting as the world's de facto policeman, although this role is enhanced by a new c...

I know I have little or nothing to add that has not already been said... ...but I'll try. First and foremost - Gates of Fire is a top-notch bit of writing. It is one of the better books that I have read and is a fantastic example of the value of historical fiction. Pressfield takes the Spartans and makes them real. He takes their struggle for independence against a world-shaking power and makes it not just an academic enterprise, but something the reader becomes invested in. He takes these names from history and makes them flesh and blood for the reader. Is that the way they really were? No. Most likely not. But, no history book can do that definitively either. This is Steven Pressfield's most popular book for a reason. He makes the Spartans and the battle between the 300 Spartans (and a few hundred other semi-professional Greek soldiers) against the Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae come to life. This battle was most recently featured in the cartoonish (bu...

"This is the devil's country...and you are fighting the devil's war" The Afghan Campaign is one of two pieces of historical fiction that Steven Pressfield has written about Alexander the Great (the other is The Virtues of War ). Pressfield has written about several historical eras but his real area of interest seems to be the Greek and Hellenistic eras. His most famous and, in my opinion, his best novel is Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae. Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) The Afghan Campaign is a solid novel. Pressfield does his best to put us on the ground with the troops, much like he did with Gates of Fire .  The reader follows a group of young Macedonian recruits as they ship off to join Alexander's army as it approaches what is now known as Afghanistan.  Pressfield's choice to view the war from the level of a raw recruit (Matthias) as he learns to fight and eventually becomes a sergeant is an interesting one - an...