Description

The Art of War by general and philosopher Sun Tzu is an influential book of strategy that has found applications in countless situations beyond the war room.
More than 2,000 years old, this classic of Chinese philosophy lays out a systematic, rational approach to tactics and strategy that leaders worldwide have applied not only to the military, but also to business, law, martial arts, and sports. This edition uses Lionel Giles’s classic translation. Giles’s extensive annotations and commentary on Sun Tzu’s aphorisms and proverbs are also included.

Description

The classic Renaissance study of military combat.

In medieval warfare, such seemingly elementary conventions as army organization, staff services, hierarchy of command, and codes of military law were nonexistent. Niccolo Machiavelli changed all that. Among other improvements, he instituted the systemic concept of troop formation and proclaimed discipline to be of supreme importance. War was war, he believed, and victory the primary aim to which all other considerations must be subordinated. Though a republican at heart, he say as the crying need of his day a strong political and military leader who could forge a unitary state in northern Italy to eliminate forces from Italian soil. 

The Art of War, like its fellow Machiavellian treatise The Prince, has been highly esteemed for nearly five centuries and widely read by such leaders as Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Saint-Cyr, and Clausewitz. It outlines most of the fundamental issues that theorists of war continue to examine today, making it essential reading for any student of military history, strategy or theory.

The authoritative Ellis Farneworth translation, with an introduction by Neal Wood.