Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #196 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 68 pages

Synopsis
Twenty-Five Hundred years ago, Sun Tzu wrote this classic book of military strategy based on Chinese warfare and military thought. Since that time, all levels of military have used the teaching on Sun Tzu to warfare and cilivzation have adapted these teachings for use in politics, business and everyday life. The Art of War is a book which should be used to gain advantage of opponents in the boardroom and battlefield alike.

Customer Reviews

This translation seems hard to apply to myself
I cannot yet see the way that all the content this book offers about the principles of Sun Tzu can be applied to life on a whole.
This book is incredibily concise and seems to only demonstate practical instructions. I'm left using own imagination to discover what they could truely mean and offer to me in my own circumstances seen as I am not really in a battle field with two opposing forces.
By using this idea however as an absolute representation of lifes struggles the book can be great but in this edition, a lot of the writings are simply too practical, saying about camping and assuring you are away from rivers, for that to appear to be the case. Certainly some of these pointers can have spiritual value and ideas of balance between armies actions and how they forecast victory or defeat are apparent.
I need to be more patient to find the true messages from the book still. It's compacted practical sentences make it hard for me to do so however, this leaves yourself to make your own interpretations.
Other editions may offer more information making it clearer to understand.
This is a test of understanding to me and I look forward to discovering the books true messages. This short translation just makes that harder.
Having said all this, I've only read the first chapter so far so it may all turn around.

useful, if you want to start a war.
when i heard about this book from friends i expected tao te chingesque aphorisms over and over again but when i first flicked through it i realised that this is so much more.
genuinely useful advice is interspersed with impassioned speeches about the honour of war
"When some are seen advancing and some retreating, it is a lure"
"If birds gather on any spot, it is unoccupied"
"the leader of armies is the arbiter of people's fate, the man on whom it depends whether the nation shall be in peace or in peril"
OK so it's not really useful to you but it will make you think differently about conflict because Sun Tzu has managed to prove that it truly can be an art

A must read book !
Short but Sweet !
Applicable theories even today !
Must Read, more than once !