Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus's Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior

In September 1965, US Navy pilot James Bond Stockdale was shot down over North Vietnam and became a prisoner of war. What followed was an eight-year test of ancient Stoic philosophy under the most extreme conditions imaginable.

Courage Under Fire is Stockdale's account of how the teachings of the Greek philosopher Epictetus—a former slave who had known suffering—sustained him as he led his fellow prisoners through systematic torture, years of solitary confinement, and psychological warfare d...