Reddit reviews The Art of War

Well, we hit the 10000 limit. Reserving this comment for the misc. section.

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Interested in reading the famous Art of War by Sun Tzu? Don't!

The text is mostly useless junk, and what's salient can be summarized as follows:

• War is the greatest responsibility of the state.
  
  
• The general has a right to disobey the emperor.
  
  
• The emperor has an ethical imperative to avoid or quickly win battles.
  
  
• Spies are super important.
  
  There, I just saved you a couple of tedious evenings! Please reward with upvotes!
  
  > But MegasBasilius, what if I do want to read the text?
  
  Then purchase this edition.

I have this edition: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/081331951X/

I've very happy with it - the book is broken into two chunks. The second is the complete english translation of the text. This bit is "The Art of War" as written by Sun Tzu. The first chunk is a long historical context that leads up to the life of Sun Tzu and gives the political and military climate of the time, as well as timelines/troop movements of several of the battles Sun Tzu participated in. I thought this part was incredibly interesting for it's own sake, though if you're just looking for the bare text, then this becomes merely fluff. Both chunks are well and thoroughly footnoted both for references and tangential information.

Overall, it was a very solid buy, and if you're at all remotely interested in the China in which this text was written as opposed to just the bare text, I would definitely get it.

This is the one that I have, the large page number for such a short book is a result of all the work the author did to put The Art of War itself into its correct historical context.

http://www.amazon.com/Art-War-History-Warfare/dp/081331951X/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1419351680&sr=8-10