The Art of War Paperback – October 30, 2009

A War treatise written long ago by a Chinese strategist. I'm reminded of that old saying, "The more things change, the more they stay the same!"This could serve as the text for a War College introductory military strategy course. The recommendations are timeless. I don't intend or expect to be called upon to lead a military strategy effort, but the fundamentals are applicable to many other fields of human competition … the thoughtful reader will find much in these ancient writings that can be applied to areas of human competition other than war …The bonus, of course, is the insight the book offers into human competitions of ancient times ...

When I first started reading this book, the translations were quite difficult to understand. I had to read quite a few sentences more than a few times because the grammar is quite odd. But Giles comments seem to really shed some light on what Sun Tzu is trying to say. The book also gives a lot of realistic examples from ancient Chinese history which help to make the book easier to understand. Some of the ideals placed in the book can be altered to fit normal life, and not just war. I pretty much plan on reading this a few dozen times so that the info sticks in my head.

The Art of War can be understood as a breakdown of the chaos of warfare into components that can be analyzed and understood. The tactics are mostly about controlled organization, recognizing environments and situations and the correct response to each one. Organization is subject to change in competition. The Art of War is essentially the strategy of responding to changing environments. Response is thus relative to evolving conditions.

read it, read it again, then apply it to your everyday life. it will teach you when to engage in a debate and when to step away, and how to determine when to do this. How to pick your battles, and how to win, every time...even when you win, by choosing not to fight.

Lionel Giles translated the book wonderfully. And if he had stopped there this would have been a 5 star review. However throughout the book, more often than translating, he has inserted poorly formatted commentary on the text. He adds lines that break out from the reading of Sun Tzu to interject what is not needed and detracts from the writing.Footnotes would have been fine. Italicized notes would have been fine. Some method of distinguishing his commentary from the text is needed. Instead he puts his comments in [brackets] sometimes paragraphs at a time.I went through the first several chapters with a highlighter trying to get Sun Tzu's words and Lionel Giles' separated but gave up. Find another copy of this wonderful book. This edition should be passed by.

My son like it,,, good book, we have bought other prints of this book. This one we'll liked , do recommend

Worth reading if you feel threatened at times.

It's ok, but there were a lot of print/spelling errors making hard to intemperate the meanings of some passages. Hire a proof reader

Elegí este ejemplar debido a que según he leído es el más preciso en cuanto a la traducción del original.