Steven Pressfield's "The Warrior Ethos": One Marine Officer's Critique and Counterpoint

MWSA Review

In "The Warrior Ethos" Carpenter sets about comparing and contrasting today's realities from Pressfield's examples, drawn from the past.

Warriors, fighting men/women could be stated to have characteristics, attitudes, habits, to do so would be fair. If approached from an encompassing view. Carpenter does a credible job of destroying Pressfield's opinions. Times have changed, and things change along with time. Pressfield ignored that and Carpenter destroys Pressfields opinions one by one.

Why the Commandant of the Marine Corps replaced a good book with an at best questionable one lacks needed explanation. Placing Carpenter's book on the list as a co-read would be my solution to the issue. Much can be learned and the Corps should embrace what Carpenter has written.

Reviewed by: jim greenwald (2015)

Author's Summary

STEVEN PRESSFIELD IS WRONG - not everyone is a warrior. But those of us who are can indeed benefit from developing a strong Warrior Ethos; one that acknowledges diversity and is based on solid principles of firmness, fairness, and dignity towards our fellow warriors - and our adversaries. 

Written by a Marine officer, this alternative Warrior Ethos is intended primarily for men and women in uniform, but its core principles can be applied by leaders from all walks of life, and anyone who wants to develop in themselves the qualities of Experience, Empathy, Example, Education, and Empowerment.

This book calls upon historical wisdom of Herodotus, Plutarch and Thucydides along with the modern observations of John Keegan, Michael Ignatieff, Lieutenant General Victor "Brute" Krulak, and others to debunk the misogynistic and backwards-looking nature of Pressfield's 2011 book, and to provide a better moral compass than the honor-bound, shame-based relic of dead cultures that he has offered up as a template for our young women and men in uniform.