Reading List · Lisanne Swart
Books by Steven Pressfield
Steven Pressfield spent decades trying to become a writer before he became one. He worked as a copywriter, truck driver, bartender, fruit picker, and screenwriter. He lived out of his car. He was in his fifties when Gates of Fire made him famous. That biography matters because it is the subject of his most important nonfiction: the experience of Resistance — the internal force that keeps people from doing the work they know they are supposed to do. Pressfield writes in two distinct modes: historical military fiction set in ancient Greece and beyond, and nonfiction about the creative life. Both bodies of work are worth your time. The War of Art is on my bookshelf.
By Lisanne Swart · 8 books · Historical Fiction · Nonfiction · Published 1995–2016
Historical Fiction
The Legend of Bagger Vance
Set during the Great Depression, The Legend of Bagger Vance follows Rannulph Junah, a Georgia war veteran broken by his experience of combat, who returns to golf with the help of a mysterious caddie named Bagger Vance. The novel is explicitly structured as a retelling of the Bhagavad Gita — Bagger Vance is Krishna, and the golf course is the battlefield of Kurukshetra — though the metaphysical framework sits lightly on what is also a compelling sports narrative. The novel was adapted into a film in 2000 starring Matt Damon, Will Smith, and Charlize Theron.
The Legend of Bagger Vance shows Pressfield’s preoccupations in their earliest form: the warrior facing the test, the mentor who appears when needed, the need to find and play one’s “authentic swing.” The spiritual framework is more explicit here than in his later work, but the book is genuinely readable as a novel as well as a philosophical parable. A good introduction to Pressfield if the ancient history of Gates of Fire feels like a larger commitment.
→ Find The Legend of Bagger Vance on AmazonGates of Fire
In 480 BC, three hundred Spartan warriors and a small Greek alliance held the narrow pass at Thermopylae for seven days against the Persian army of Xerxes, which numbered in the hundreds of thousands. This is the story everyone knows. Gates of Fire is the story told from inside it — through the perspective of Xeones, a helot squire who serves one of the Spartan warriors, and who is the sole Greek survivor of the battle. Pressfield spent years researching Spartan society and the tactics of ancient warfare, and the novel has been taught at West Point, the United States Naval Academy, and the Marine Corps Basic School. It is considered one of the finest military novels ever written.
Gates of Fire is Pressfield’s masterwork of fiction and one of the most viscerally immediate accounts of combat, leadership, and the psychology of warriors that I have read. What makes it exceptional is not the battle scenes — though those are extraordinary — but its sustained examination of what Spartan society was actually for: what it means to prepare an entire culture for the possibility of collective death, and what that preparation does to the individuals inside it. The novel makes Thermopylae feel not like history but like something happening right now. Read it in as few sittings as possible.
→ Find Gates of Fire on AmazonTides of War
Where Gates of Fire is about a last stand, Tides of War is about the long, grinding, morally corrosive experience of a war that went on for nearly three decades. The Peloponnesian War — Athens against Sparta, 431 to 404 BC — is narrated through the life of Polemides, an Athenian soldier who served under Alcibiades, the brilliant, unscrupulous, and ultimately self-destructive general who shaped the war’s course. The novel is structured as a deposition given before Polemides’ execution, and the frame creates a specific gravity: we know from the first page that the war ends badly, and the question is how it got there.
Tides of War is a more complex book than Gates of Fire — darker, more politically entangled, and more interested in failure than in heroism. Alcibiades is one of the most compelling figures in Pressfield’s fiction: a man of extraordinary gifts who uses them entirely in the service of his own ambition, and who ends up destroying the city that produced him. The novel rewards readers who want Pressfield at his most morally nuanced. Read it after Gates of Fire, not before.
→ Find Tides of War on AmazonThe Virtues of War
Narrated in the first person by Alexander the Great, The Virtues of War covers the arc of Alexander’s campaigns from the conquest of Greece through the invasion of Persia and into the furthest reaches of Asia. Pressfield writes Alexander as a man who understands himself primarily as a soldier — someone for whom peace is not restoration but vacancy — and the novel’s central tension is between Alexander’s unquenchable need for conquest and the specific, human cost of that need to everyone around him. The narrative voice is confident, precisely observed, and occasionally terrifying in the clarity of its self-knowledge.
The Virtues of War is the most psychologically interior of Pressfield’s ancient world novels. Writing Alexander in the first person forces Pressfield to make him understandable from the inside, not just impressive from the outside — and the result is a portrait of a conqueror that is both admiring and unflinching about what conquering actually requires. The novel connects directly to Pressfield’s nonfiction: his warrior ethos, his ideas about professionalism and purpose, find their fictional embodiment here.
→ Find The Virtues of War on AmazonNonfiction
The War of Art
The War of Art is built around a single concept: Resistance. Pressfield argues that there is a force — internal, impersonal, universal — that opposes every act of creative work, every attempt to do the thing we know we are supposed to do. Resistance is the procrastination, the self-doubt, the rationalisation, the finding of other things to do instead. The book is divided into three sections: the first identifies Resistance and its manifestations; the second argues for the professional rather than the amateur orientation toward creative work; the third presents a more mystical framework about muses and the sacred dimension of art. The book has sold millions of copies and has been cited by a remarkable range of people — novelists, filmmakers, startup founders, athletes — as the book that changed how they work.
The War of Art is on my bookshelf because it names something real. Resistance is a genuine phenomenon — anyone who has tried to do consistent creative work has encountered it — and Pressfield’s decision to treat it as an external force rather than a personal failure is both practically useful and psychologically astute. The third section, about the muses, is the most unusual and the most divisive; readers who do not share Pressfield’s metaphysical framework may find it unconvincing, but the first two sections stand entirely on their own. A short book. Read it in one sitting.
→ Read my full thoughts on The War of Art → Find The War of Art on AmazonTurning Pro
Where The War of Art identifies Resistance and the professional orientation as a response to it, Turning Pro goes further into what the transition from amateur to professional actually requires. The amateur, Pressfield argues, is someone who has not yet committed to the work as the central organising principle of their life — someone who is still hedging, still maintaining the option to quit, still defining themselves primarily through their day job or their relationships or their recreations. The professional makes the work primary, shows up regardless of inspiration, and accepts the costs of that commitment. The book is shorter than The War of Art and more focused; it reads as a companion volume rather than a sequel.
Turning Pro is the book to read immediately after The War of Art, not because it covers new ground but because it sharpens and extends the earlier book’s central argument. The distinction between amateur and professional is one of Pressfield’s most useful concepts, and this book develops it in ways that The War of Art only sketches. If The War of Art changed something in how you think about Resistance, Turning Pro gives that change somewhere to go.
→ Find Turning Pro on AmazonNobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t
The title is the lesson: when Pressfield was writing advertising copy, a mentor told him that nobody wants to read your shit — that the reader’s default position is indifference, and that the writer’s job is to overcome that indifference. The book traces Pressfield’s career from advertising through Hollywood screenwriting through fiction, using each stage to develop a principle about the craft. It is more practical and more specific than The War of Art — less about Resistance and more about the actual mechanics of storytelling, structure, and the reader’s attention. For writers specifically, it is the most immediately useful of his nonfiction books.
Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t is the Pressfield book I recommend to writers over The War of Art, not because it is better but because it is more actionable. The War of Art is about orientation; this book is about execution. The account of his years writing screenplays that never got made — and what he learned from them — is the most honest and most useful section. It also has the most memorable opening line of any book about writing I have read: blunt, accurate, and impossible to forget once you’ve internalised it.
→ Find Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t on AmazonThe Knowledge
Pressfield’s account of how stories come into being — the creative process as he has experienced it across novels, screenplays, and nonfiction. The Knowledge is about what it takes to find the idea at the heart of a project, to recognise it when it arrives, and to have the discipline to follow it through to completion. It extends the framework of The War of Art into the more granular territory of actual creative practice: less about Resistance as a concept, more about the moment-by-moment experience of doing the work, including the doubts and reversals and dead ends that are part of every creative project regardless of how experienced the person doing it is.
The Knowledge is the most mature of Pressfield’s nonfiction books — written by someone who has been practising what he preaches for decades and has the specific authority that comes from that. It is less urgent than The War of Art and more patient, in the way that late-career work often is, and that patience is its particular quality. Read it after you have worked through the earlier nonfiction and want to see what the framework looks like when it has been lived with for thirty years.
→ Find The Knowledge on AmazonFrequently asked questions about Steven Pressfield
What books has Steven Pressfield written?
Steven Pressfield has written over twenty books across two distinct bodies of work. His most important historical fiction includes The Legend of Bagger Vance (1995), Gates of Fire (1998), Tides of War (1999), The Virtues of War (2004), and The Afghan Campaign (2006). His most important nonfiction includes The War of Art (2002), Do the Work (2011), Turning Pro (2012), Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t (2016), and The Knowledge (2019). The War of Art is his most widely read book and the one most people encounter first.
Which Steven Pressfield book should I read first?
It depends on what you are looking for. If you want nonfiction about creative work and overcoming Resistance, start with The War of Art — it is short, direct, and the one that most people find transformative. If you want historical fiction, start with Gates of Fire — it is his masterwork and the most immediate entry point into his fiction. The two are entirely different reading experiences and there is no particular reason to read one before the other.
What is The War of Art about?
The War of Art is about Resistance — the internal force that opposes creative work and keeps people from doing what they know they should be doing. Pressfield identifies Resistance in all its forms (procrastination, self-doubt, rationalisation), argues for a professional rather than amateur orientation toward creative work, and in the book’s third section presents a more spiritual framework about muses and inspiration. The book has been cited by millions of readers across many fields as the book that changed how they work. It is on my bookshelf.
What is Gates of Fire about?
Gates of Fire is a novel about the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, told through Xeones, a helot squire who is the sole Greek survivor of the battle where three hundred Spartans held a narrow pass against the Persian army for seven days. Pressfield spent years researching Spartan society and ancient warfare, and the novel has been taught at West Point, the US Naval Academy, and the Marine Corps Basic School. It is widely considered one of the finest military novels ever written.
What order should I read Steven Pressfield’s nonfiction?
Start with The War of Art. It establishes the framework everything else builds on. Then Turning Pro, which develops the amateur/professional distinction in more depth. Then Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t, which is the most practically useful for writers specifically. Do the Work (2011) can be read alongside The War of Art — it is very short and focused on a single project from start to finish. The Knowledge works best after you have read the earlier books, as it assumes the framework and builds on it from a position of more experience.
