The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle

Steven Pressfield is a screenwriter and author of numerous best-selling books including Gates of Fire, The Legend of Bagger Vance, and The War of Art. Born in Trinidad to an American Navy family, Pressfield attended Duke University where he graduated with his BA in 1965. After serving in the Marines for several years in the late 1960s, Pressfield worked at a variety of odd jobs including taxi driver, fruit picker, teacher, truck driver, and more. In The War of Art, Pressfield admits that during his young adulthood he was controlled by his “Resistance,” not applying himself to the craft of writing that he desperately wanted to pursue.

Finally, Pressfield began writing more consistently, and sold movie screenplays such as King Kong Lives, Above the Law, and Separate Lives. He then wrote several fictional novels, beginning with The Legend of Bagger Vance, which was later adapted into a film directed by Robert Redford. Pressfield is best known as an author of military fiction due to the success of his novels set amidst ancient conflicts. These include Gates of Fire, which is narrated by a Spartan soldier fighting the Persians at Thermopylae, Tides of War set during the Peloponnesian War in ancient Greece, and The Afghan Campaign about Alexander the Great’s conquest of central Asia.