The Lion's Gate: On the Front Lines of the Six Day War

The bestselling author of Gates of Fire and Killing Rommel delivers his first work of military nonfiction—an epic narrative of the Six Day War.

June 5, 1967. The fearsome, Soviet-equipped Egyptian Army and its 1000 tanks are massed on Israel’s southern border. Meanwhile, the Syrian Army is shelling the much smaller nation from the north. And to the east, Jordan and Iraq are moving brigades and fighter squadrons into position to attack. Egypt’s President Nasser has declared that the Arab world’s goal is no less than “the destruction of Israel.”

June 10, 1967. The combined Arab armies are in ruins, their air forces totally destroyed. Israel’s citizen-soldiers have seized the Gaza Strip and the entire Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan. The land under Israeli control has tripled. The charismatic, eye-patch wearing Defense Minister Moshe Dayan has barreled through the Lion’s Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem, meeting up with a gang of paratroopers who have already raised the blue and white flag that frames the Star of David.

How on earth did this happen?

Only Steven Pressfield could get the real story from the fighter jocks in the air, the tank commanders through the sand, and the infantrymen on the ground. Through more than 300 hours of interviews conducted in Israel, he has written a gripping chronicle of the six days that changed the Middle East forever. He also captures the universal experience of individual soldiers compelled to stare down mortal fear and move headlong into a firestorm.

The Lion’s Gate blends the immediacy of Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down, the esprit de corps of Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers, and the soul of James Bradley’s Flags of Our Fathers. It will join the indispensable canon of military nonfiction.