military

Sun Tzu "The Art of War" was excellent. This book is a great book on strategy. Whether you command a nations army, war games or a moderen business. If the reader uses some of these war tactics and strategies in the modern world, they may find it easy to relate. Thus it is easy to relate to this book. Even rivals in sports and entertainment can be outwitted by the wisdom in this book. It also adds examples of some actions, which show how these sayings and writings apply to the real world.

So no matter what you were looking for in this book, whether it be business, sports, war games, or actual wars, you can be sure to learn more on how to best deal with the situation through the strategies in this book.

The book is timeless....and should be required reading for all persons.

The Art of War was originally intended for reading by ancient China's ruling military elite, and not lowly commoners such as us. It is one of the few great books people seem to be universally familiar with, and for good reason.

The struture is blindingly simple - Sun Tzu writes short chapters about different areas of battle which consist of simple dictums. Utterly straightforward, and generalisable to any form of conflict.

Surface-reading this book will take you minutes, not hours - however, time must be spent with even the barest of his principles. The purchase of this book has become alarmingly trendy over recent years, but with no noticeable effect on the global intelligence of its middle manager market. Books like this do not read themselves.

A more accurate edition would have gained 5 stars without a second thought. The fact that much better versions are available (and freesource!) holds this version back.

This is a well-edited edition of Sun Tzu; the only aspect that left something to be desired was the inclusion of illustrative anecdotes; I would have preferred if they were left to the end of the chapter.

I can understand why this book was a fad in the business world but object to claims that the tactics described in this book are easily applied to business. This is a book about conflict, specifically, war, and there is much wisdom lost if it is taken out of its context. There is much excellent advice for analogous situations; political persuasion and debate, games of Go, Shogi or Chess, or even sporting events.

When taken from the world of conflict to the business, the realm of cooperation (in the sense that competing businesses compete to cooperate the best with their customers), The Art of War becomes yet another tome of "Eastern" sayings which sound pretty and can be "applied to any situation" only because they come to mean very little.

Those who will be in a conflict situation or wish to prepare for one, even if it is a simple game of Go, should study this book. Read the text and the anecdotes, and come back later to read it again gaining fresh insight.