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The Art of War (Barnes & Noble Classics)
Free PDF The Art of War (Barnes & Noble Classics)
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About the Author
Dallas Galvin, a writer and journalist specializing in international affairs and the arts, has reported on military affairs in Latin America and Asia and produced documentaries for the NATO Alliance.
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
From Dallas Galvin's Introduction to The Art of War War is a howling, baying jackal. Or is it the animating storm? Suicidal madness or the purifying fire? An imperialist travesty? Or the glorious explosion of a virile nation made manifest upon the planet? In all recorded history, this debate is recent, as is the idea of peace to describe an active state happier than a mere interregnum between fisticuffs. Astounding as it may seem, war has consistently won the debate. In fact, it never had serious competition-not until August 24, 1898, anyway, when Czar Nicholas II of Russia called for an international conference specifically to discuss "the most effectual means" to "a real and durable peace." That was the first time nations would gather without a war at their backs to discuss how war might be prevented systematically. Nicholas was successful. His first Peace Conference was held in 1899. It was followed by a second, in 1907. These meetings gave rise to a process in which the world gained a common code of international laws. It was a moment when peace and the trials of war were under the microscope of the civilized world. Off in a very quiet corner of this stage, there also appeared two scholars: one, a ghost, Sun Wu-this is Sun Tzu's actual name; Sun is the family name, and Tzu an honorific-a member of a Chinese clan of experts on arms and fighting, who had lived some 2,400 years earlier; the other, a librarian and student of the Chinese classics, Lionel Giles, who published his translation of The Art of War in 1910. He, too, was a son of eminence-his father was the great sinologist Herbert Giles-and he transported Sun Tzu's urgent injunctions on the nature of war across vast reaches of time and culture; the task was extraordinary, the impetus behind it almost saintly. The influence of the work of these two men colors our lives even as this text is written. But it did not come without effort, and even today, with a century of English-language scholarship on Asian literature, religion, and societies behind us, there is still much to puzzle the general reader. World War I and its carnage would soon burst upon the world, leaving an estimated 25 million dead, twice the tally for all the wars of nineteenth-century Europe. Nicholas and his entire class would disappear amid the terrors of revolution in Russia, China, and Mexico, to name but the grandest uprisings. World War II would follow with no fewer than 60 million dead, and on its heels a whirl of wars for independence, civil wars, and the surrogate wars of Vietnam, Korea, Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East-all in all, a century-long testament to the failure of humanity's best intentions. It would be an odd soul who did not find himself feeling as Abraham Lincoln did in his Second Inaugural Address, on March 4, 1865, as the American Civil War was ending: "Fondly do we hope-fervently do we pray-that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away." Yet it takes little experience to understand the futility of belligerence alone, as Sun Tzu wrote: "[H]e who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory" (chap. IV, paragraph 15). On the world front or the level of the individual, the issue is not force, not arms-it is strategy. In his study of Mao Tse-tung, modern warfare's most ardent student of Sun Tzu, Robert Payne notes: "Sun Wu's ideas on war are exceedingly adaptable, . . . nearly all of them demonstrating how the commander of a small force can overcome a powerful enemy, given suitable conditions of his own making. These apothegms have a peculiarly Chinese flavor, hardheaded, deeply philosophical, often showing a disturbing knowledge of the human soul under stress" (Robert Payne, Mao Tse-tung; see "For Further Reading"). But how did Sun Tzu know what he knew? Where did he get his information? Can we trust it?
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Product details
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics; Reprinted edition edition (May 1, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1593080174
ISBN-13: 978-1593080174
Product Dimensions:
5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 7.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.2 out of 5 stars
5,992 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#484,669 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Baron Antoine Henri de Jomini's "The Art of War" is an early classic on military strategy and tactics. With von Clausewitz, he was one of the more widely read scholars on the subject in the 19th century. His book tends to have an abstract, scholarly air to it that suggests that he was more of an "arm chair" theorist than a man whom he learned much from--Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon may have had general perspectives on warfare, but he was also someone who was able to be improvisational on the battlefield, and Jomini cannot quite capture that in this work. Nonetheless, a classic.Charles Messenger's Introduction does single out Jomini for mention, when he notes (Page v): "Nineteenth -century military thought was dominated by two men, one a German and the other a Swiss. . . . They were von Clausewitz and Jomini." Jomini argued that (Page vii): "Strategy decodes where to act; logistics brings the troops to this point; grand tactics determines the manner of execution and the employment of the troops."As Jomini's actual work begins, he identifies the six key components of the art of war (Page 2):"1. Statesmanship in its relation to war.2. Strategy, or the art of properly directing masses upon the theater of war, either for defense or for invasion.3. Grant tactics.4. Logistics, or the art of moving armies.5. Engineering--the attack and defense of fortifications.6. Minor tactics."The book itself, then, considers these elements of the art of war. No need to go into great detail. But some general points are in order. At one point, he emphasizes the importance of "lines"--interior lines, where one side has a more compact line and can move troops from one point to another with greater facility than the enemy; exterior lines, which are longer. If a smaller force, interior lines are critical; if a larger force, exterior lines may prove no impediment to success.One facet of this book is his diagrams depicting various orders of attack (pages 188 and following). This tends, as noted earlier, to be pretty abstract. One hesitates to think that officers in the heat of combat will intellectually assess the various orders of attack and rationally choose one over another. Among these are straight linear orders (where the two forces approach one another in straight lines) to "en echelon" attacks, where the lines are arrayed in depth.He notes in his conclusion that (Page 321) "War in its ensemble in not a science, but an art."So, if one might be interested in an analysis of military strategy and tactics from the early part of the 19th century, this is not a bad starting point. It is a classic on the subject, and, even if too abstract and academic, can be a useful book to understand the military in that era.
I want to tell future readers of this book in this way. I read it first when I was 14 or 15. I thought it was a book on how to smartly fight a war. Then I re-read it when I was 28 and it occurred to me that it may be an instruction book on how to navigate an honorable life. Years passed and I recently found it at the bottom of a box in my closet. I read it again at age 56. I realized it has more to offer. If you read this book, you will actively have to replace Sun Tzus' ancient terms and placement of hierarchy and apply them to modern situations and people. Family, bosses, neighbors, employees and the list goes on. It is my belief that this "manual" can help solve minor and major disruptions in life if used correctly. It is a book meant for good.
This is a ~15 page "summary" of the book. Ordered this thinking it was the full text because it doesn't say otherwise in the description.
It’s clear that Mr. Gagliardi is extremely passionate about all things Sun Tzu. Through various repackaged books sold both here at Amazon and through the “Science of Strategy Institute†he set up to sell you Sun Tzu themed board games and videos, he has certainly created a virtual cottage industry of Sunzi-phernalia. In addition, he also offers personalized training packages for up to $1,500 to amp up your ability to unleash the power of Sun Tzu’s system of total and complete victory in all competitive endeavors you face, whether in the boardroom or the bedroom.But all of this aside, how successful is Mr. Gagliardi at his most basic task: competently translating Sun Tzu’s original text, The Art of War? The answer: not very.This book is a complete mess, with unforgivable errors in both translation and general knowledge concerning China and the Warring States era present in almost every verse. In lieu of a laundry list I will give you just a one line example where Mr. Gagliardi clearly shows that he is out of his depth in terms of translation competence. I maintain a database of 30 translations of The Art of War in English that I use to compare and contrast various efforts, and included the screenshot of the relevant verse so you can compare it to how others have approached the text.In Chapter 11, Sun Tzu is concerned that his own soldiers might either break and run or else refuse to support the other flanks of his own army while in battle. To show how this can be remedied, Sun Tzu brings up the example of how a certain snake can provide a valuable lesson for his soldiers. As Gagliardi translates it, the line reads: “Act like an ordinary mountain snake.â€From a novice’s perspective, this could be a defensible translation choice. The original Chinese characters for this line are: CHANG SHAN ZHI SHEIf you looked up each character individually via the internet you could definitely make a case that the line could read: ordinary mountain (of) snakeThe problem is that professional translation doesn’t work this way (a one-for-one translation of characters), and you have to understand all of the nuances applicable to how these thoughts are put together, especially when you are talking about a millennia old text written in a language vastly different than its modern equivalent. What a competent Sinologist would easily understand, but Gagliardi obviously didn’t, is that the character CHANG isn’t functioning as an adjective modifying the noun “snake,†but instead is the proper noun indicating the name of the mountain on which the snake resides. So the line should read: “Act like the snake of Mt. Changâ€So while Gagliardi is perfectly content in his own ignorance that Sun Tzu is talking about an ordinary snake, what the text is really saying is that he needs his soldiers to be like an EXTRAordinary snake which possesses the magical ability to continue providing support to its endangered other half even after being cleaved into two separate parts.Now if you are looking to really get beyond the basics of the translation (say like someone who is willing to shell out $1,500 for advanced personal lessons) and might be curious where this Mt. Chang is located and why it was relevant to Sun Tzu, you might be surprised. Sun Tzu never actually mentioned Mt. Chang, but instead was referring to a Mt. Heng, where this extraordinary snake supposedly lived (by the way, Sun Tzu gave the snake a name, the Shuairan, a fact that was completely missed by Gagliardi). It turns out that the oldest extant copy of the Art of War was transcribed during the Han Dynasty period. What professional Sinologists know but Mr. Gagliardi might not, is that in classical Chinese there was a prohibition on using characters that were the same as the personal name of the sitting emperor. At around the same time as we believe the earliest version of The Art of War was transcribed, Emperor Wen of Han was sitting on the throne and had a personal name of “Liu Heng†which means that “Heng†would need to be omitted from all texts. “Heng†actually means “Perseverance†and it turns out that “Chang†also carries the meaning of “Perseverance†so Mt. Heng was changed to Mt. Chang to get around this prohibition—an interesting tidbit for your next trivia night.Of course the name change does nothing to impact your understanding of the Art of War, but does illustrate the difference between buying a copy of the The Art of War from a professional Sinologist who understands both the translation issues and can provide relevant historical and philosophical background, and the rank amateur who does this for a hobby and wants to pass off an inferior product hoping you won't know the difference. There are too many professionally done Sun Tzu translations available by qualified individuals (Ames, Griffith, Sawyer, Ivanhoe, Mair, Minford) to justify paying the same amount of money for Mr. Gagliardi’s lackluster effort.You wouldn’t select a surgeon for your triple-bypass surgery simply because he was “passionate†about cutting people open and learned some things on the internet. You would want to select someone who has years of relevant professional experience under their belt, and just as important, board certified. Fortunately, the stakes aren't quite so high when choosing the best Sun Tzu translation, but the same principle should apply. Don't be an ordinary purchaser of this classic text, be an extraordinary one.
Just received the book. No where in the description does it say it is a shortened version of the book. I feel like I was ripped off
NOT THE FULL TEXT....these are the cliff notes......product page sucks.
This is ABSOLUTELY AWFUL. It should say PUBLIC DOMAIN as it is like a copy from someone who took notes off of someone who took notes who took notes off someone who doesn't even write in the English language! It is woefully abridged (to the max) looks like it was not edited or proofread and I loathe it. AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL
The author adds his own knowledge along with Sun Tzu's. And the author's additions are excellent. You might find Sun Tsu on the net in PDF or something, but I wanted a book form and the author was a pleasant surprise for his own good knowledge on these matters. Its a fairly short book, but that it compares so much with modern warfare and intelligence wars that you should get to know it.
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