Steven Pressfield, Adventure | Historical Fiction | Military Options

[ItsMeHelena]

About Steven Pressfield:
Steven Pressfield is an American novelist and author of screenplays, principally of military historical fiction set in classical antiquity. His historical fiction is well-researched, but for the sake of dramatic flow, Pressfield may alter some details, like the sequence of events, or make use of jarring contemporary terms and place names, his stated aim being an attempt to capture the spirit of the times.

Complete Bibliography: (books in red are included in this topic)
The Legend of Bagger Vance (1995)
Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae (1998)
Tides of War (2000)
Last of the Amazons (2002)
Alexander: The Virtues of War (2004)
The Afghan Campaign (2006)
Killing Rommel (2008)

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GATES OF FIRE

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Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.

Thus reads an ancient stone at Thermopylae in northern Greece, the site of one of the world's greatest battles for freedom. Here, in 480 B.C., on a narrow mountain pass above the crystalline Aegean, 300 Spartan knights and their allies faced the massive forces of Xerxes, King of Persia. From the start, there was no question but that the Spartans would perish. In Gates of Fire, however, Steven Pressfield makes their courageous defense--and eventual extinction--unbearably suspenseful.

In the tradition of Mary Renault, this historical novel unfolds in flashback. Xeo, the sole Spartan survivor of Thermopylae, has been captured by the Persians, and Xerxes himself presses his young captive to reveal how his tiny cohort kept more than 100,000 Persians at bay for a week. Xeo, however, begins at the beginning, when his childhood home in northern Greece was overrun and he escaped to Sparta. There he is drafted into the elite Spartan guard and rigorously schooled in the art of war--an education brutal enough to destroy half the students, but (oddly enough) not without humor: "The more miserable the conditions, the more convulsing the jokes became, or at least that's how it seems," Xeo recalls. His companions in arms are Alexandros, a gentle boy who turns out to be the most courageous of all, and Rooster, an angry, half-Messenian youth.

~200 MB

CODE

http://rapidshare.com/files/98414407/SP_GoF.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/98427990/SP_GoF.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/98428857/SP_GoF.part3.rar

This post has been edited by ItsMeHelena: Jul 18 2009, 05:34 PM

[ItsMeHelena]

LAST OF THE AMAZONS

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In or around 1250 BC, so Plutarch tells us, Theseus, king of Athens and slayer of the Minotaur, set sail on a journey that brought him to the 'land of 'tal Kyrte', the 'Free People', a nation of fiercely proud and passionate warrior women whom the Greeks called 'Amazons'. Bound to each other as lovers as well as fighters and owing allegiance to no man, the Amazons distrusted the Greeks with their boastful talk of cities and civilization.
And when their illustrious war queen Antiope fell in love with Theseus and fled to Athens with the kind and his followers, so denying her people, the Amazon tribes were outraged.
Seeking revenge, they raised a vast army and marched on Athens. History tells us they could not win, but for a brief and glorious moment the Amazons held the Attic world in thrall before vanishing into the immortal realms of myth and legend.

Resounding to the sound of brutal, bloody battles fought hand-to-hand and peopled with wonderfully realised flesh and blood characters, LAST OF THE AMAZONS is Steven Pressfield's most thrilling - and thrillingly imagined - novel yet. A dazzling and profoundly moving tale of love and war, honour and revenge, here the ancient world is brought to brilliant life as we are told the extraordinary, inspiring yet near-forgotten story of the last of the Amazons...

~190 MB

CODE

http://rapidshare.com/files/138629322/Pressfield__Steven__cast__Last_of_the_Amazons__32k___mp3_.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/138651266/Pressfield__Steven__cast__Last_of_the_Amazons__32k___mp3_.part2.rar

This post has been edited by ItsMeHelena: Jul 12 2009, 02:05 PM

[ItsMeHelena]

THE AFGAN CAMPAIGN

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Here the foe does not meet us in pitched battle, as other armies we have dueled in the past . . . Even when we defeat him, he will not accept our dominion. He comes back again and again. He hates us with a passion whose depth is exceeded only by his patience and his capacity for suffering.

In words that might have been ripped from today's combat dispatches, Steven Pressfield, the bestselling novelist of ancient warfare, returns with a riveting historical novel that re-creates Alexander the Great's invasion of the Afghan kingdoms in 330 b.c., a campaign that eerily foreshadows the tactics, terrors, and frustrations of contemporary conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Narrated by Matthias, a young infantryman in Alexander's army, The Afghan Campaign explores the challenges, both military and moral, that Alexander and his soldiers face as they embark on a new type of war and are forced to adapt to the methods of a ruthless foe that employs terror and insurgent tactics, conceals itself among the civilian populace, and recruits women and boys as combatants.
Matthias joins Alexander's army after it has conquered the Persian empire and is advancing east into Afghanistan on its way to the riches of India. Part of a unit that includes recruits his own age as well as veterans, Matthias chronicles his rapid coming-of-age as a soldier as he enacts Alexander's scorch-and-burn strategies, experiences the joys and sorrows of a romance with an Afghan girl, and faces the barbarism of the Afghans, his fellow soldiers, and ultimately himself.
As Matthias relates the brutal day-to-day encounters between the two sides, he exposes the human cost borne by a company of men whose code is humanist and secular when they seek to impose their will on a people of deep religiosity, insularity, unbending pride, and a passionate readiness to die for their cause.

An edge-of-your-seat adventure that brings to life the confrontation between an invading Western army and fierce Eastern warriors determined at all costs to defend their homeland, The Afghan Campaign once again demonstrates Steven Pressfield's profound understanding of the hopes and desperation of men in battle and of the historical realities that continue to influence our world.

~240 MB

CODE

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4KXM5AJB
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[ItsMeHelena]

KILLING ROMMEL

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Autumn, 1942. Hitler's legions have swept across Europe; France has fallen; Churchill and the English stand isolated on their island. In North Africa, Rommel and his Panzers have routed the British Eighth Army and stand poised to overrun Egypt, Suez, and the oil fields of the Middle East. With the outcome of the war hanging in the balance, the British hatch a desperate plan—send a small, highly mobile, and heavily armed force behind German lines to strike the blow that will stop the Afrika Korps in its tracks.

Steven Pressfield brings to life the flair, agility, and daring of this extraordinary historical commando unit, the Long Range Desert Group. He describes in detail the tactics, weaponry, and specialized skills needed for combat under extreme desert conditions. He captures, too, the camaraderie of this “band of brothers” as they perform the acts of courage and cunning crucial to the Allies' victory in North Africa. As in his acclaimed earlier novels, Pressfield combines historical accuracy and edge-of-your-seat battle scenes to create riveting fiction.

CODE

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HBBAZQRD
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[ItsMeHelena]

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