GAtes of Fire by Steve Pressfield

[jan]

Thanks to this website, I learned of Steve Pressfield's release of his book on Alexander. I have just finished reading Gates of Fire, which is about the Battle of Thermopylae, King Leonidas, and the 300 Spartans. I do not believe even a book on Alexander could top this book for its sensitivity, its vivid battle descriptions, its development of character. This is a great book to understand why it is that Alexander decided to burn the Palace of Xerxes. If you have not yet read it, make it a must read. I had tears in my eyes at the end of the book. It is simply GREAT!

[iskandewr_32]

The 300 SpartansThis book and story is what started me on the journey towards Alexander,especially when viewing the film,all well and admirable but what gets over looked with this story, is that the Spartans were not alone.They had Athenians,Thespians etc where the actual numbers were over thousands.I am not belittleing what the Spartans did but in militaristic fields it would be quite easy to hold such a pass against enourmous odds due to the narrow spaces that the Persians had so there enormous numbers meant nothing,until they got behind the Greeks.Then it was hopeless admirable the way the Spartans stayed and fell but when they held the pass on one front the had ample numbers to hold it indefinately.regardsKenny

[kate]

Hi Jan,
I agree that "Gates of Fire" is a wonderful book, but I don't hold out the same hope for Pressfield's forthcoming book on Alexander. I base this negative opinion on his other ancient world books, which I found really disappointing, and the boring extracts Pressfield has posted up from "Virtues of War". I hope I'm wrong and this Alexander book turns out to be as good as "Gates of Fire", but I'm not going to buy a copy unless I heard good reports first.Cheers,
Kate

[Carl]

I don't know what Pressfield's website says about the book, but I received an advanced reader's copy yesterday and I have just taken a cursory look at the book so far. Basically, it's a first person account of Alex's life starting around Chaeronea, but it appears to be structured in flashbacks of sorts.The little bits that I have read have not been promising, and although I did like Gates of Fire, Pressfield's other books were terrible, IMO, so I don't have very high hopes. I'll see if I can get into it this weekend.The sceduled release date for The Virtues of War is 10/19/04.

[jan]

Thanks for giving the release date. I understand that some advance copies are available on e-bay. I have read only the excerpts on his website, and I found them to be probably out of context and meaningless. They didn't warm me up to the book yet, but because of GOF, I am still interested in his point of view. On the GOF website, I reread one of his responses that intrigued me, and that was the one about Mozart. The question blinded me so much that I had to reread it twice to get to the response. In that response, I believe that Steve is probably correct about Alexander's selfconfidence and lack of doubts.It corresponded to something that I had just realized in one of my time transition experiences. I believe that Alexander's deity status is most misunderstood and that it is always difficult to separate arrogance from superiority in him. I keep a journal in which I discussed this with myself, so that I won't discuss it here. But I do believe that Alexander is a true god, not only by Greek definition but by today's definition as well. Some call it genius now. But for a child of 16 to rule as coregent with his mother and to perform as he did at Charonea is something that I want to read in Pressfield's book. I have my own ideas, but I don't post them at this site. Maybe Pressfield will open a forum for that too.