I teach a lot of aspiring soldiers, and sometimes they recommend a book for me. I’m a lifelong civilian with an urge to at least learn more about a profession I never took up myself. Now, my students tend to be much younger than me, so it doesn’t always work out since what I think of as a high quality book isn’t always their idea of a high quality book. But that doesn’t mean I don’t try.
That’s basically why I read author Steven Pressfield’s short treatise on what it means to be a warrior titled The Warrior Ethos.
The basic premise of the book is these are Pressfield’s own ruminations on what it means to be a warrior. He doesn’t make any claims that his ideas are the be-all and end-all on the topic, just that these are the thoughts he had on the subject. He states that since he’s written a lot about soldiers and war that he had some thoughts he wanted to share.
Essentially, Pressfield defines the Warrior as a community-minded person, more interested in the promotion of the nation and the defense of others than in his own self-promotion. It doesn’t necessarily have to be on an actual battlefield as it could be an internal struggle towards self-improvement. A Warrior does things through a strict honor code, does not condone barbarism, and lives for others. That, in a nutshell, is what this book is about.
Pressfield explains this over about 90 pages using short anecdotes and explanations. Most of his anecdotes connect to stories about the ancient Spartans or Alexander the Great. Towards the end, he tosses in the Bhagavad Gita. He doesn’t go into great or longwinded explanations. He’s basically just explaining himself.
And…that’s about it. It’s interesting in the sense that it is one man’s ruminations, but anyone looking for anything particularly deep or earth-shattering will probably be disappointed.
Grade: C+
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