Gates Of Fire

Product Information

In addition to understanding why we train the way we do as you read Gates of Fire , I recommend that new leaders also focus their reading on the characters of Dienekes and Leonidas. The responsibility that new officers will face in their roles as a platoon commander is likely to be significantly greater than anything they have experienced in previous leadership roles in their life. Learning how to study and observe successful leaders with the purpose of identifying what has made them so influential and considering how their actions could be applied within your personal leadership style is an empowering ability, and these characters can serve as two initial case studies in leadership.

a b c "Turkmenistan hopes 'Door to Hell' will boost tourism". CTV News. Relaxnews. Agence France-Presse. 2014-06-22 . Retrieved 2017-01-28. Author Steven Pressfield is perhaps best-known at the moment for his book The Legend of Bagger Vance, a story about golf, which has just been made into a film by Robert Redford. Film-rights to Gates of Fire have been taken up by George Clooney’s production company. What will you look for to know the difference in your own unit and the people you are fighting? How do you prepare your unit to fight with courage?Lessons? I don’t know. Sparta was a small, compact, basically tribal society where every citizen (forgetting about the helots for the time being) was vitally needed and where warfare was hand-to-hand and absolutely communal, with your own brothers, uncles, father and friends fighting beside you, so if you acted the coward, there was no hiding it. The modern world of anonymity, mass culture, commercialism, shamelessness, indulgence of sensual desires, worship of money couldn’t be farther. The Spartan society is like a culture from the moon. Only on an individual and interior basis, I think, can we take lessons that might help us. Self-discipline, etc. It’s not a bad thing in this day and age to be a little bit “spartan,” don’t you think? Soldiers are philosophers by trade, as opposed to nature. Whether they are gifted logicians or readers or not, their profession demands a close association with death and life, fear and courage, love and hate, joy and sorrow. A soldier gets acquainted with these, not as abstract ideas, but as intimate realities which are a part of the day-to-day environment.

Gurt, Marat (2010-04-20). "Turkmen president wants to close "Hell's Gate" ". Reuters . Retrieved 2012-12-16. Told from the perspective of a captured, critically wounded Spartan helot (all the Spartans died, after all) who is being questioned by Xerxes (King of Persia) for information about the Greeks, the story presents a sympathetic, insider view of Spartan society and accurately presents the values of Greek civilization in contrast to that of the Persians. Pressfield is intimately familiar with the major historical accounts of the battle and fills in the many gaps with events and conversations that could have, and possibly should have, happened. I won't spoil anything (though anyone who knows even the very basics of this story knows how this will all go down), but this is a description of ancient warfare at its finest. a b c d Nunez, Christina (2014-07-14). "Q&A: The First-Ever Expedition to Turkmenistan's 'Door to Hell' ". National Geographic . Retrieved 2023-07-13. This is probably the best account of Thermopylae out there. The battle comes to life in a way only the best novels can achieve. The brotherhood formed by combat is really pushed here and characters who seem unlikable at first become more so over time. The book’s small-scale focus on a minor player means that we don’t get any real considerations of the broader organization or issues (really, Persia’s decision to invade is never explained), so if you want to see that I’d recommend a book like Farewell, Great King. This tells the story of Themistocles and his leadership of Athens during and after the war and can provide a useful counterpoint to the more gung-ho account in this book. Alas, I haven’t seen any naval officers try to do for Salamis what Pressfield does for Thermopylae here. Naval warfare is truly underdeveloped in historical fiction for this period.How difficult was it to find a publisher for this project, and how enthusiastic was the publisher about it at first? As an officer, Dienkes was a teacher, and the statement is made in the book that to be a teacher, you have to be a student. What does Dienekes teach throughout the book? After refusing promotion to mothax for a third time, the krypteia seizes Rooster, along with Alexandros and Xeones. Despite the best efforts of Alexandros and Dienekes before the krypteia, it appears that Rooster and his infant son will be put to death. Suddenly, Arete appears and claims that Dienekes is the biological father of Rooster’s son. This is clearly false, but the krypteia is forced to accept the lie, rather than impugn Dienekes’s honor. Rooster is allowed to flee the city, and his baby is adopted into Dienekes’s home. As a secondary consequence of Arete’s intervention, Dienekes is selected for the battle at Thermopylae.