Book Review on Wings of Fire

When people think Appalachia, they think of West Virginia, but the Appalachian Mountains stretch far from West Virginia and the people living in their hills have a shared cultural heritage that is evident no matter what state they are a part of.

Gates of Fire By: Steven Pressfield Subject Person- Spartan Warriors Place- Greece 480 B.C. Event- Battle of Thermoplae. Concept- Xeones recounts his life leading up to the battle. Object- Greek city-states consisting of 300 Spartan Warriors, 400 Thebans, 700 Thespian Volunteers And around 900 Helots Fought The Persian Empire at the pass of Thermopylae. Reason For Choosing Book Prior to reading this novel I had some knowledge of the Battle of Thermopylae. I watched the movie 300last year and it is based on the battle of Thermopylae and the lifestyle of the Spartan Warriors. Summary Gates of Fire tells the story of a young Greek boy, Xeones, who is the sole Hellenic survivor of the epic battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. After

This book is about the Spartans warrior culture and how it ties into the Marine Corps values, and the present day warrior culture of our Marine Corps.

“India has never been a symbol of unity of Hindu-Muslim civilization. It is not possible for the British Government to create homogeneity between Hindu and Muslim culture and civilization as the two systems are distinctively opposed to each other. There is no way other than the partition of India”

“Words of Fire,” by Anthony Collings, details the lives of different journalists in regards to free press and covering potentially dangerous stories. Anthony Collings is a former CNN reporter who shifted his focus from reporting to telling the story of journalists who have come under fire in a power struggle between government and free press. Collings puts free press into a spectrum, on one side there is the United States, where the press is largely free, and on the other side there are places like North Korea or China where press is largely restricted by the government. Collings does not focus on these extremes, but rather the places in the middle where there is an ongoing struggle between state power.

Memoirs of war often reflect the positive or negative experiences endured throughout battle. Considered by many to be one of the best memoirs of World War I, Hervey Allen’s “Toward the Flame”, recalls his own experiences of battle. His recollection of events shows that he had a negative image of war and that there was nothing glorious about it. What started out looking like a man’s greatest adventure turned into a shell-shocking reality that war is actually horrible and trying. Allen’s experiences with consistent hunger, mustard gas, and artillery shellings led to his disillusionment with war, and left him with a permanent hatred of battle.

In his book Forgotten Fire, author Adam Bagdasarian investigates the Armenian Genocide through the eyes of a twelve year old Armenian boy named Vahan Kenderian. Through Vahan, the reader experiences the atrocities committed during the 1915 genocide of Armenians in Turkey. The Turks, who were Muslim, viewed the Christian Armenians as inferiors and treated them as such; under Turkish law, Armenians had nearly no rights, no fair justice in Turkish courts, could not bear arms, and were taxed far higher than Turks, which led to many families losing their possessions and homes. But unlike many other Armenian families of the time, Vahan's family, consisting of two girls, four boys (including Vahan), Vahan's Uncle Mumpreh, grandmother Toumia, and

Regardless on Lee’s expressed neutrality in The Great Kalahari Debate his book has been prompted to the front lines of the clash between traditionalists and revisionists. Being used as the poster book for the traditionalist side Lee obviously demonstrates the holistic approach by stating that no one “had bothered to systematically ask the Ju people themselves for their views of their own history.”(Lee 2003: 213) This attitude combined with the extensive amount of time spent doing fieldwork

The book, People of the Three Fires, is written by three different people each describing a tribe in detail.The book is very well written and relatively easy to understand. It is informative and was written to be used as a teaching tool for schools. The book discusses the relationship between the groups that lived in Michigan and surrounding areas.

Ilan Stavans says that Juan Rulfo’s book, The Plain in Flames, is best represented by the phrase realismo crudo. Stavans defines this phrase as “a type of realism interested in the rawness of life”, meaning that he characterizes Rulfo’s writing as an unfiltered view into the lives of the average Mexican (Stavans, xi). By writing in this style, Rulfo is able to provide “an image—instead of just a description—of our landscape” as stated by Octavio Paz (xv). To create this image, Rulfo broke his story writing the process down into three separate steps. As paraphrased by Ilan Stavans, the first step “is to create a character”, the second step “is to place him in an environment where he might move around” and the third step “is to discover how the character expresses himself” (xiii). Rulfo was able to repeatedly crafted stories that were filled with high levels of realismo crudo by using that special three-step process. By creating his protagonist, crafting an environment for said protagonist, and allowing the character to express themselves within this environment, Rulfo crafted a three-tier image of post-revolutionary life in Mexico that has never been seen before.

The brain: one of few organs a body cannot function without. If the brain is compromised, then the rest of the system goes down with it. Without a brain, simple every day functions often taken for granted, such as breathing, chewing, putting on clothes, become impossible without assistance. In her autobiography Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, Susannah Cahalan uses journalistic techniques as well as her friends and family as resources to present to the world a recently discovered brain disease called Anti-NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate acid)-receptor encephalitis. The memoir serves as a timeline of tests, operations, and treatments that documents the life-altering experience of

Fields of Fire by James Webb is a historical novel first published in 1978 that takes place in the year 1969 during the Vietnam War. Although there are many characters that are significant to the story, the novel focuses mainly on three marines who find themselves in a platoon with each other; Robert E. Lee Hodges, “Snake,” and Will “Senator” Goodrich. Webb gives the reader a great, detailed background of each of these characters through a combination of both direct and indirect characterization. As the novel progresses, major events that occur include battle and violence, loss and coping, and learning. The themes that naturally

“Gates of Fire” by Steven Pressfield is a historical fiction novel that describes the Spartans at The Battle of Thermopylae. The story is told from the perspective of the only survivor, Xeones, who is recovered and captured by the Persian Empire. Some argue that this novel is not a great source for 21st-century history students, and some also argue that this novel should not be read in a classroom setting due to its lack of historical content. Several even question the novel’s historical accuracy and find it to be no better than a traditional textbook. Although this novel is classified as fiction, a literary works of imagination, Pressfield’s description of the Spartans makes this novel a creditable source for students and makes it appropriate to read in a college environment.

In South Africa, he involved himself in an attempt to end discrimination against the minority Indians residing there. During this course, he developed “satyagarha”, which translates into “soul force”, or an approach of non-violence resistance, against the British governments in South Africa. In the years following the World War I, Gandhi became a leading figure in India for his struggle to achieve independent from the mighty British rule. His willingness to tolerate the punishments and the prison confinement earned him the title of “ Mahatama”, a “great soul” in India in 1914. (Mohandas Gandhi, 2015)

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being". The book The Essential Gandhi expresses Gandhi’s views on issues like untouchability, religion, nationality, his movements like civil-disobedience are deeply shown in this book. Readers can learn about Gandhi’s childhood, his early married life, his realization and transition in South Africa, and his ways of approach towards attaining Independence in India. The book did a fantastic job in showing the Gandhi’s principles like non-violence with exemplary contexts.