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Summary: War is Work
Review: So speaks Dienekes, with the mind of a general but who only wants to be a platoon commander, as his tale and the tales of others are interwoven in the tight Spartan military society that accepts no failures, only victory or death. There is something inspirational about that. You see snippets of that in Brady's The Coldest War about the Marines in Korea, as well as contemporary historical reports. We love it. When Xerxes sends an emissary to the Hot Gates to permit the remaining Spartans to live and asks for their shields, Leonidas, already mortally wounded says, "Come and get them." This is not unlike Colonel Puller at the Frozen Chosin Reservoir in Korea in 1950, who when told they were surrounded by 10 Divisions of the Communist Chinese, quipped "now we got 'em where we want 'em." We cheer. We applaud. It's Horatio at the Bridge; the 600 at Balaclava; the Brits at Roarke's Drift. Yet what we really have never established is the balance between that "all or nothing" society, and our contemporary life (for the most part in the USA) in a civilized society. We can't send men to die. We can send them to fight valiently and maybe die, but we can't send them to die. And, as the heroes of Vietnam learned, sometimes we take those innocents and villify them. So it's a great story. But it's real fiction for two reasons, one because it can't happen again and two, because we're not sure it really ever did happen. It does contain a great picture of life 24 centuries ago. A very worthwhile, compelling read. However, like the PG-13 caveat, it is very gory.
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Summary: Obedient to their laws
Review: Steven Pressfield brings to life the Klingons of ancient Greece in such remarkable detail that by the time the Spartans march to their heroic defeat at Thermopylae, the reader knows enough to berate a warrior who isn't holding his shield at the right height or has parted his hair on the wrong side. The three days of fighting at Thermopylae seem to take 72 hours to read, with every slash and spurt recorded. This is a very gory book. And yet, and yet... all these deaths are the loss of characters we have come to know. Narrator Xeones, the lone (fictional) survivor, clings to life just to name the men he fought beside in order that their sacrifice will not be forgotten. Very moving. And really, really gory.
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Summary: powerhouse novel about Sparta
Review: This is very good genre fiction. Pressfield uses narrative dialogue and characterization to make Sparta come alive. He shows Spartan brutality and their contempt for non Spartans in detail that is mostly acurrate but also gives full credit to their bravery and the noble role they played against Persian despotism.The battle sequences and the characterization of the Persians are especially well done. It isn't art but itis greatentertainment.
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Summary: Pressfiled does to Thermopylae what Homer does to Troy!
Review: This was an excellent and exciting book. Ones emotions really get stirred up. The book contains very descriptive battle scenes and has many sad moments. The book contains a lot of true historical facts well mixed with the fiction. The Spartan warrior code of ethics is the ideal that today's service men pay lip service to and try to emulate. After reading it you will want to one day make a pilgrimage to Thermopylae. Buy it today!
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Summary: A very good story from a soldiers view
Review: As a soldier in the US Military, I appriciate a story from the soldier's view, in the midst of battle.
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Summary: Sparta gets her day in the sun.
Review: The first thing you need to know about Pressfield is that he has read his Victor Davis Hanson, Donald Kagan and John Keegan. Indeed some of the battle descriptions come straight from the pages of these worthy writers. And Pressfield is very upfront about this debt. And the fact that he has done his research makes this novel worth reading almost in and of itself. For by rendering the views of these scholars into novelistic form, he makes available to the general public insights about how the Greeks lived and fought. He also owes a HUGE debt to Paul Cartledge -- whose book, "Spartan Reflections" I have to say I can not recommend to a non-specialist audience. Yes, Pressfield loves his Spartans. Almost to the exclusion, it would seem, of the rest of Greece. His portrait of deomcratic Athens is shocking -- a place you wouldn't really want to visit. But Sparta? What a great place (just ignore those helots over there). And here is the nub of what I have to say. You can dig and scour and revise history all you want, but at the end of the day, the Spartans were a militaristic, profoundly undemocratic society whose contributions to our culture are minimal. Pressfield, perhaps unconsciously (or consciously) aware of this seeks to at least accord the laurel to Sparta for SAVING that part of Greece, (Athens) which really WAS important to our cultural history. He has Leonidas say, "If we had withdrawn from these Gates today, brothers, no matter what prodigies of valour we had performed up till now, this battle would have been perceived as a defeat....If we had saved our skins today, one by one the separate cities would have caved in behind us, until the whole of Hellas had fallen." Okay, that's fine if it is just the pre-battle bombast from a leader of men about to die. But Pressfield follows it up with THIS remark: "The men listened soberly, knowing the king's assessment accurately reflected reality." Excuse me? Are we seriously to take the view that had Leonidas evacuated with his remnants that Themistocles and the Athenians would have shipped oars and packed it in? Pressfield seems to think so. And for those of you who agree, may I recommend, Peter Green's wonderful "The Greco-Persian Wars" - hopefully it will change your mind. The Spartans may have died for many things, honour being one of them, but the heroic last stand did not change history - it did not save Greece. What it DID do was add an absolutely extraordinary act of bravery to the annals of mankind - and it made a lot of widows and orphans in the process. Pressfield has a wonderful habit of using the origianl Greek - he peppers his prose with it. You'll be surprised at the origin of many well known English words. Enough has been written about the authenticity of the battle scenes. They are fantastic. But there is much, much more. There is a truly brilliant scene where a map of the world is shown to the Spartans by some Egyptian sailors. We forget. At this time in history people had very little idea of where the hell they were - or just how big the world was. Susan P. Mattern does a very nice job of communicating this in her book, "Rome and the Enemy". At times the dialogue and story-line are a bit hokey (the attack on the King's tent, for example - oh come on!!). And, yes, it sure does have the feel of a book ready-made for a screenpplay - but so what. It was a pot-boiler and putting the foregoing quibbles and his pro-Spartan bias to one side, I loved it.
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Summary: waiting for the movie rights
Review: I enjoyed reading the novel but it seemed rather sloppy in some details and read more like a screenplay waiting to picked up for Hollywood. Of course that isn't all bad because a lot more people might go back and read more about ancient times.
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Summary: Gates of Fire : An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
Review: Terrific story. Lots of interesting details combined with interesting characters made it hard to put down.
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Summary: Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
Review: Terrific story. Great blend of history and storytelling.
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Summary: Awesome!
Review: I'm not a big military fiction reader, but once I picked this book up, i couldn't put it down. The descriptive detail of the battles and the portrayal of leadership traits of the Spartans was thrilling.
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