A succinct, engaging, and practical guide forsucceeding in any creative sphere, The War ofArt is nothing less than Sun-Tzu for the soul.

What keeps so many of us from doing what we long to do?

Why is there a naysayer within? How can we avoid theroadblocks of any creative endeavor-be it starting up a dreambusiness venture, writing a novel, or painting a masterpiece?

Bestselling novelist Steven Pressfield identifies the enemy thatevery one of us must face, outlines a battle plan to conquer thisinternal foe, then pinpoints just how to achieve the greatest success.

The War of Art emphasizes the resolve needed to recognizeand overcome the obstacles of ambition and then effectivelyshows how to reach the highest level of creative discipline.

Think of it as tough love . . . for yourself.

Whether an artist, writer or business person, this simple, personal, and no-nonsense book will inspire you to seize thepotential of your life.

Like Sun Tzu's THE ART OF WAR, LEFT OF BANG isn't just for the military. It's a must read for anyone who has ever had a gut feeling that something's not quite right...be it walking down the street, sitting in a corporate boardroom, or even entering an empty home.
-- Steven Pressfield, bestselling author of THE WARRIOR ETHOS, GATES OF FIRE, and THE WAR OF ART.

-- You walk into a restaurant and get an immediate sense that you should leave.
-- You are about to step onto an elevator with a stranger and something stops you.
-- You interview a potential new employee who has the resume to do the job, but something tells you not to offer a position.

These scenarios all represent LEFT OF BANG, the moments before something bad happens. But how many times have you talked yourself out of leaving the restaurant, getting off the elevator, or getting over your silly gut feeling about someone? Is there a way to not just listen to your inner protector more, but to actually increase your sensitivity to threats before they happen?

Legendary Marine General James Mattis asked the same question and issued a directive to operationalize the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter program. A comprehensive and no-nonsense approach to heightening each and every one of our gifts of fear, LEFT OF BANG is the result.

There is an enemy. There is an intelligent, active, malign force working against us. Step one is to recognize this. This recognition alone is enormously powerful. It saved my life, and it will save yours.
-- Steven Pressfield

Could you be getting in your way of producing great work? Have you started a project but never finished? Would you like to do work that matters, but don't know where to start?The answer is Do the Work, a manifesto by bestselling author Steven Pressfield, that will show you that it's not about better ideas, it's about actually doing the work. Do the Work is a weapon against Resistance - a tool that will help you take action and successfully ship projects out the door.

Picking up where The War of Art and Turning Pro left off, Do The Work takes the reader from the start to the finish of any long-form project-novel, screenplay, album, software piece, you name it.

Do The Work identifies the predictable Resistance Points along the way and walks you through each of them. No, you are not crazy. No, you are not alone. No, you are not the first person to hit the wall in Act Two.

Do The Work charts the territory. It's the stage-by-stage road map for taking your project from Page One to THE END.

No one's insights about the craft and journey of being an artist have guided me in the day-to-day struggle of this profession more than Steven Pressfield. Wherever you are, whatever you've been called to make, you need to read this book...and everything else he has written.

- Ryan Holiday, Bestselling Author of Ego Is the Enemy and The Obstacle Is the Way

YOU ARE AN ARTIST ... AND YOU HAVE AN ARTIST'S JOURNEY

I have a theory about the Hero's Journey. We all have one. We have many, in fact. But our primary hero's journey is the passage we live out, in real life, before we find our calling.

The hero's journey ends when, like Odysseus, we return home to Ithaca, to the place from which we started.

What then?

The passage that comes next is The Artist's Journey.

On our artist's journey, we move past Resistance and past self-sabotage. We discover our true selves and our authentic calling, and we produce the works we were born to create.

You are an artist too-whether you realize it or not, whether you like it or not-and you have an artist's journey. Will you live it out? Will you follow your Muse and do the work you were born to do?

Ready or not, you are called.

WHAT IS THE STORY GRID?
The Story Grid is a tool developed by editor Shawn Coyne to analyze stories and provide helpful editorial comments. It's like a CT Scan that takes a photo of the global story and tells the editor or writer what is working, what is not, and what must be done to make what works better and fix what's not. The Story Grid breaks down the component parts of stories to identify the problems. And finding the problems in a story is almost as difficult as the writing of the story itself (maybe even more difficult.) The Story Grid is a tool with many applications:
1. It will tell a writer if a Story works or doesn't work.
2. It pinpoints story problems but does not emotionally abuse the writer, revealing exactly where a Story (not the person creating the Story...the Story) has failed.
3. It will tell the writer the specific work necessary to fix that Story's problems.
4. It is a tool to re-envision and resuscitate a seemingly irredeemable pile of paper stuck in an attic drawer.
5.It is a tool that can inspire an original creation.

Running Down a Dream is a book about how to do the thing most people want to do but tell themselves is too scary, too hard, too unlikely.

- Ryan Holiday, Bestselling Author of Ego Is the Enemy and The Obstacle Is the Way

This book is the secret sauce...

- Barbara Corcoran, founder of The Corcoran Group, author, and Shark Tank investor

Shatters the mold of typical self-help.

- Daniel H. Pink, author of, When and Drive

The truth about how to succeed.

- Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, frequent TED speaker, and author of Anything Your Want

Indispensable!

- Steven Pressfield, bestselling author of The War of Art and The Artist's Journey

A Deeply Personal Field Guide to Defeating Your Own Worst Enemy

When you dream, you envision a magical future...the day when you have heroically slain your dragons and unlocked the creativity and genius buried deep inside.

But how do you actually get to that destination?

You can analyze the myths of visionary creators-artists, writers, musicians, software developers, etc. who have accomplished the impossible. You'll read about how they went for it, refused to quit, and would not be denied. But exactly how these successful creators went from being fearful dreamers to accomplished artists proves elusive.

Running Down a Dream unflinchingly bares the naked truth of creation and shares the practical to-do list to take you from here to there.

The good news?

You don't have to be an Austen or a Michelangelo or an Oprah to create a work of art.

The bad news?

There is no glossing over the pain, embarrassment, and financial terror necessary to contend with on your journey to mission accomplished.

More good news?

What lies ahead for you is the realization of your heroic self. The run is worth it in ways you can't yet imagine.

COGNITIVE DOMINANCE: Enhanced situational awareness that facilitates rapid and accurate decision-making under stressful conditions with limited decision-making time.
Brilliant Paradigm-blasting and profound. - Steven Pressfield, Bestselling author of Gates of Fire and The War of Art

Get a Grip.

The first time he cut open a patient's skull, neurosurgeon Mark McLaughlin found himself confronting a powerful force that his fellow brain surgeons agreed was best never spoken of.

Fear.

But Dr. McLaughlin knew that if he couldn't find a way to cope with this formidable foe, all he had striven for as a physician would be lost. So, with a scientist's analytical precision and a philosopher's worldview, McLaughlin derived and formalized a method by which he could act rationally and confidently under the operating room's lights and in all of the complex relationships in his life, especially under fear's profound influence.

With inspiration and guidance from intellectual titans like Rene Descartes, Charles Darwin, William James, Carl Jung, and contemporary thinkers like Nate Zinsser, Jordan Peterson, Iain McGilchrist, and J.K. Rowling, McLaughlin lays out his twenty-year intellectual adventure story. The payoff of his odyssey is as life-changing as it is thrilling.

Mark McLaughlin, (www.markmclaughlinmd.com) is the founder of Princeton Brain and Spine Care specializing in trigeminal neuralgia and cervical spine surgery. A former NCAA Division I wrestler, McLaughlin was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2016. His commentary regularly appears in Business Insider and other national media outlets.

This is a work of genius, a metaphor-studded treasure chest, filled with wisdom for anyone willing to go look. I've already ordered ten copies. -- SETH GODIN, bestselling author of THE ICARUS DECEPTION --Fun and insightful lessons from a man who's lived life on his terms. -- KAMAL RAVIKANT, bestselling author of LOVE YOURSELF LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT HAVE YOU EVER: --Wished you were someone else? --Struggled to fit in with the crowd at school, at work, at the local American Legion Post? --Said something hurtful to your beloved for no apparent reason? --Regretted the choices you've made to stay safe and secure? I'M NOT FOR EVERYONE. NEITHER ARE YOU. Is a highly concentrated, straight-to-the-bloodstream three part collection of axioms designed to help you to discover your singular inner style and to best express it in all of your personal and professional relationships. Without apology. Written down as notes to myself over the course of eight decades plus as a dancer/advertising superstar/performer/playwright/author, David Leddick teaches us that how you see yourself is how others see you So find your own style and express it as freely as you would a work of art.

I am dangling beneath my parachute. Gazing down from a height of 10,000 feet, knowing I am going to be killed in less than fifteen minutes, I feel great sorrow for myself. None of my fellow pilots who've parachuted into the Nile Delta have survived the encounter with the welcoming committee below, and I have no reason to think my fate will be any different. -- Giora Romm, Solitary Giora Romm's Solitary seized me from the opening paragraph. Yes, the storytelling is spellbinding, but it is Romm's explication of the theme of the fall, ordeal and self-resurrection that places his book not only among the finest war writing ever but, like Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, alongside the most profound reflections on the resilience and capacity of the human soul. -Steven Pressfield, bestselling author of Gates of Fire and The War of Art In June 1967, Lt. Giora Romm shot down five MiGs in the Six Day War. This remarkable feat made Romm, at twenty-two years old, the Israeli Air Force's first fighter ace. Just two years and a half years later, in another dogfight, Romm's Mirage jet was shot down over the Nile Delta. With one arm broken and the opposite leg shattered by violent ejection from the aircraft, Romm collected himself and prepared for the worst. If his captors discovered his Hero of the Six Day War identity, Romm would become the most prized propaganda tool in the Arab-Israeli conflict, bar none. How he maintained his sanity in solitary confinement, in a plaster cast that extended from his toes to his chest, while suffering beatings and daily interrogation, strains comprehension. Solitary is destined to become mandatory reading not just at military academies and synagogues, but in hospices, rehabilitation centers and creative writing programs around the world.

Praise for Giora Romm's Solitary Fighter pilots tell the greatest stories and the great ones tell the best stories of all...Solitary is a great addition to any library dedicated to the art of war or the ability to retain one's humanity in the most inhuman circumstances. -Pat Conroy, bestselling author of The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and his Son This book is not only among the finest war writing ever but, like Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, Solitary sits alongside the most profound reflections on the resilience and capacity of the human soul. -Steven Pressfield, bestselling author of Gates of Fire and The War of Art A story of survival, Solitary is proof, needed today more than ever, that no matter the pit or prison, the human spirit can endure. I anxiously await the day my own sons are old enough to read it. -Rich Cohen, bestselling author of Tough Jews and The Avengers A magnificent triumph of the human spirit. Solitary is a truly rare, firsthand glimpse into the hellish life and psyche of an elite warrior turned prisoner of war. I was captivated from the first page to the last. -Sean Parnell, bestselling author of Outlaw Platoon Solitary is simultaneously heart-breaking and encouraging, incredibly cringe-worthy and compelling, and both depressing and inspiring. It's grabs you immediately, and doesn't let go until you're finished. -Tucker Max, bestselling author of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell Solitary is a gutsy story of one man's survival, endurance, and strength of will as Romm overcomes all odds to once again pilot a jet fighter in combat. --Larry Alexander, bestselling co-author of A Higher Call You will tear through this book... -Ryan Holliday, bestselling author of The Obstacle is the Way I am dangling beneath my parachute. Gazing down from a height of 10,000 feet, knowing I am going to be killed in less than fifteen minutes, I feel great sorrow for myself. None of my fellow pilots who've parachuted into the Nile Delta have survived the encounter with the welcoming committee below, and I have no reason to think my fate will be any different. -- Giora Romm, Solitary In June 1967, Lt. Giora Romm shot down five MiGs in the Six Day War. This remarkable feat made Romm, at twenty-two years old, the Israel Air Force's first fighter ace. Just two years and a half years later, in another dogfight, Romm's Mirage jet was shot down over the Nile Delta. With one arm broken and the opposite leg shattered by violent ejection from the aircraft, Romm collected himself and prepared for the worst. If his captors discovered his Hero of the Six Day War identity, Romm would become the most prized propaganda tool in the Arab-Israeli conflict, bar none. How he maintained his sanity in solitary confinement, in a plaster cast that extended from his toes to his chest, while suffering beatings and daily interrogation, strains comprehension. Solitary is destined to become mandatory reading not just at military academies and synagogues, but in hospices, rehabilitation centers and creative writing programs around the world.

Major Jim Gant, a man seen by many of us as the 'perfect insurgent, '--an inspiring, gifted, courageous leader... -- GENERAL DAVID H. PETRAEUS (U.S. Army, Ret.) THE PAPER THAT ROCKED OSAMA BIN LADEN Team members during the May 2, 2011 U.S. military raid that killed Osama Bin Laden seized piles of Al Qaeda intelligence. One piece of evidence found in Bin Laden's personal sleeping quarters was an English language copy of Jim Gant's One Tribe at a Time. It contained notes in the margins consistent with others identified as written by Osama Bin Laden. A directive from Osama Bin Laden to his intelligence chief was also discovered. It identified Jim Gant by name as an impediment to Al Qaeda's operational objectives for eastern Afghanistan. Bin Laden ordered that Gant be assassinated. One Tribe at a Time] was hugely important...at a time when I was looking for ideas on Afghanistan... Gant] was the first to write it down, in a very coherent fashion, very readable, very encouraging frankly...and there is enormous power in that. --General David H. Petraeus (U.S. Army, Ret.) quoted in American Spartan: The Promise, The Mission, and The Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim Gant by Ann Scott Tyson

Deeply personal and profoundly moving...An American Jew has filled me with the love and pride for my brothers and sisters, the Children of Israel.-- Randall Wallace, author of BRAVEHEART and director of HEAVEN IS FOR REAL

Steven Pressfield grew up assuming he was like every other kid in his red-white-and-blue, Sunday-School attending, Christmas-tree decorating suburb. Then at age thirteen he found out he was in fact not a member of that tribe, but of a very different one. Five decades later, in November 2011, Pressfield boarded an El Al jet bound for Israel. At long last, he'd committed to researching and writing THE LION'S GATE, a book that would finally wrestle with the riddle of his own identity. What he learned as an artist and a man in the three years it took to complete the work is the subject of AN AMERICAN JEW, an on-the-front-lines account of the creative process...in all its wonderfully confounding forms.

Where did The War of Art come from?

How did creativity sensei Steven Pressfield come up with the notion that there is an insidious force in the universe called Resistance that keeps us from pursuing our life's work and fulfilling our artistic destiny? And that until we recognize and engage in an end-of-days battle with the big R, our inner genius will remain blocked and unborn inside an internal protoplasmic goo?

Was he touched by angels as he contemplated the universe in an ashram?

Did he meet a mysterious stranger at a truck stop in Twin Falls, Idaho who imparted deep truths over a cup of muddy Joe?

Perhaps blunt force trauma in a Reno bar had something to do with it?

If only...

As his Too Close To True Novel, THE KNOWLEDGE, riotously reveals, the truth of Pressfield's Weltanschauung origin story lies somewhere between fact and fiction...

In the high-crime 1970s in New York, Pressfield was driving a cab and tending bar, incapable of achieving anything literary beyond the completion of his third-in-a-row unpublishable novel. Until fate, in the form of a job tailing his boss's straying wife, propels him into a Big Lebowski-esque underworld saga that ends with him coming to a life-altering crisis involving not just the criminals he has become deeply and emotionally involved with, but with his own inner demons of the blank page.

THE KNOWLEDGE is not just a writer's coming-of-age story. It's every writer's coming-of-age story.
If you're a fan of THE WAR OF ART, Pressfield's new novel, THE KNOWLEDGE, is the story behind that story and the origin tale between its lines.

How Do You Write a Love Story?

THE STORY GRID WILL TEACH YOU

The Story Grid is a writing tool that...

1. Tells you if your Story works or doesn't work.
2. Pinpoints Story problems without abusing you, the writer. The Story Grid asserts that you are not the problem. The problem is the problem.
3. Reveals--in very specific terms--what you must do to fix your Story's problems.
4. Guides you in re-envisioning and resuscitating a seemingly irredeemable pile of paper you've stuck in an attic drawer.
5. Helps to inspire an original creation.

Why Is Pride and Prejudice the Consummate Love Story?

THE STORY GRID WILL SHOW YOU

You've read Jane Austen's classic Love Story and you aspire to write one yourself.

What do you do now?

In a magical world, Jane Austen would sit down with you and explain how she wrote a novel that sells approximately 400,000 copies a year...more than two centuries after it was published

In the real world, Pride and Prejudice, The Story Grid Edition is the next best thing. By transforming the reading experience into writing inspiration, it breaks down how Jane Austen abided by the five commandments of storytelling in each and every scene of her novel. And it shows you how she delivered the obligatory scenes and conventions of the Love Story genre.

Pride and Prejudice, The Story Grid Edition details the craft behind the dazzling storytelling and shows you how to tell your own best Love Story.

A master fiction and nonfiction book editor, Shawn Coyne created The Story Grid to help authors tell stories that work. Based on 25+ years of experience working with bestselling authors (including Steven Pressfield, Anita Raghavan, Bill Murray, Ann Scott Tyson, David Mamet, Mo Hayder, Robert Crais, Scott Patterson, Robert McKee, and Michael Connelly). The Story Grid is a proven tool to make you a better writer.

Visit www.storygrid.com for more.

Illuminating --General James N. Mattis, USMC (ret.) Written with the skill and precision of a philosophical sniper... -Matt Furey, author of The Unbeatable Man Since 9/11 and before, American warriors have faced combat in difficult and adverse theaters with dedication, courage, and remarkable inner fortitude. Our nation supports them during their time in the fight, and thank you for your service has become a common civilian affirmation. But what happens when these men and women return from the battlefield? What is waiting for them at home? How does our society prepare these indispensable citizens for the confusion, absurdity, and trauma of their transition back to everyday life? Marine combat veteran David J. Danelo's message is simple-those who return to peace after war possess a power that must be discovered, honored, and treasured. The Return: A Field Manual for Life After Combat tells how our military and civilian cultures can protect and nurture this potent gift. Brilliant, moving and accurate. -Dr. Edward Tick, author of War and the Soul U.S. Army Green Berets were the first in and the last out of the longest war in American History. The Return is showing them how to come home and find peace. -Lieutenant Colonel David Scott Mann (U.S. Army, Ret.), Green Beret Foundation