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“The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.”

A fascinating book for the ages! It's all about strategy, awareness and intelligence at all aspects of life (especially war), and the central message? Success is underpinned by knowing yourself and your enemy. Basically, war is deception.

“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”

And yet war is not encouraged for it's own sake, humanity and goodwill is adviced at each turn to control and temper the ugliness of war and encourage peace.

“There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.”

And...

“It is easy to love your friend, but sometimes the hardest lesson to learn is to love your enemy.”

This book is full of wisdom, amazing quotes and juxtaposing ideas on war and peace. It shows that sometimes, war is necessary to protect a nation and to establish peace. Still, I wish there was a chance, a possibility for peace on earth, a future where there is no need for war or weapons...I guess I'll keep on dreaming of this utopian world.

«Мистецтво війни»
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Автор Сунь-цзи
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Видавництво Старого Лева, 2020
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«The Art of War»
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Book by Sun Tzu, between 475 and 221 B.C.E.
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Щиро раджу до прочитання бізнес орієнтованим людям, управлінцям і менеджерам, а також людям, що працюють у сферах зовнішньої торгівлі та комунікацій.
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Окрім самого твору, перекладач Сергій Лесняк - директор компанії «RR Commodities” (Шанхай), викладач з міжнародного бізнесу у Львівській бізнес-школі УКУ (LvBS), додав також сучасну інтерпретацію твору на прикладі реальних компаній та бізнесів.
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Цитата:
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«Кидай своїх солдатів у місце, де немає виходу, тоді навіть смерть не змусить їх відступити. Коли вояки не бояться померти, вони докладуть максимальних зусиль, щоб вистояти. Коли воїни в дуже небезпечному місці - вони втрачають почуття страху. А коли нікуди втікати, їхній бойовий дух твердий. Якщо ви проникли глибоко у неприязний терен, то маєте триматися купи. Якщо немає іншого  виходу, воїни безстрашно б‘ються, а отже, без настанов і повчань будуть пильні й без нагадувань зроблять якнайкраще. Без примусу вони будуть згуртованими. Без наказів - довіряться тобі й ітимуть за тобою (частина, 11)»
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Про книжку:
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«Українською «Мистецтво війни» Сунь-дзи тлумачиться вперше. Перекладач, історик філософії Сходу, переконаний, що філософськостратегічний твір давньокитайського воєначальника та викладені в ньому ідеї і поради стосуються не лише стратегії бою і завоювання, але й усієї діяльності людини, зокрема й бізнесу.»
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#примхливачитака

Frankly, I got tired of my husband quoting this and having no idea what he was talking about. So, Heidi-the-Hippie/Librarian picked up The Art of War. I must love him a great deal because this was so not my thing though I valiantly struggled my way through it. I'd say about three quarters of the book was commentary and translation quibbles on the text itself, which is really rather brief and kind of pretty in a "this is how you kill a bunch of people" sort of way.

My big take-aways from this were:
1 Pay attention to where you are and what's going on around you all the time, especially in war. And also be super sneaky about what you're going to do. "..concealing courage under a show of timidity presupposes a fund of latent energy; masking strength with weakness is to be effected by tactical dispositions. Thus one who is skillful at keeping the enemy on the move maintains deceitful appearances, according to which the enemy will act." loc 1143

2 If you have to fight, do it fast because it's too expensive to do for long. "There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged war." loc 822, ebook.

3 Everybody uses spies and if you don't, then you're going to lose because the other guy is for sure using spies.

4 Be flexible and make the call as things happen. Don't stick to orders from an emperor who's really far away because he doesn't know what the heck is going on like you do. "Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions." loc 1296, ebook.

5 Know who you are and who you're fighting. This knowledge makes you strong so other people can't determine your future. Use it to win your war. "The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable." loc 1542, ebook.

6 Have a vision beyond what is right in front of you and guide yourself toward it, one good decision at a time. "To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence. Neither is it the acme of excellence if you fight and conquer and the whole Empire says, "Well done!" To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength; to see the sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear. What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease." loc 1011-1030, ebook

7 The place that you fight is very important as well as the officer who is calling the shots and telling you which way to go. If either of these things suck, you're in trouble. "The natural formation of the country is the soldier's best ally; but a power of estimating the adversary, of controlling the forces of victory, and of shrewdly calculating difficulties, dangers and distances, constitutes the test of a great general." loc 1886, ebook.

8 Knowing small details about the enemy is very important. For example, if the dudes you're going to war against put their pots and pans away, they're planning on dying in battle. Who knew, right? "When an army feeds its horses with grain and kills its cattle for food, and when the men do not hang their cooking-pots over the campfires, showing that they will not return to their tents, you may know that they are determined to fight to the death." loc 1752, ebook.

So, that's The Art of War. Now back to my regularly scheduled reading. :)

Understanding the ground you're standing on (strategically) is a paramount concern of Sun Tzu's treatise on The Art of War. This ground (and the moves and countermoves you can make from it) can be interpreted not just as advice on combat, but also on business and relationships. This is book I've known about for a long time. So I'm glad I got to read it, but I'm not sure it inspired me to action or to think differently about the world. Maybe that will come later.

Not for me. Boring unless you are planning go to war.

Evidently, it seems, for the last couple thousand years, EVERYONE has been using the same textbook on how to conduct a war. It also seems to be that nobody even knows for sure who wrote the book or when, but everyone uses it anyway. Included in this book are precious reminders that strategy helps you win, retreating helps you not die, if you outnumber the enemy 5 to 1, attacking would probably be a good idea, and also if you're a tiny country surrounded by powerful countries, it might be time to make an alliance or two. If these sound like things you don't already know, but would like to know, then this book is for you. However, in the off-chance you're in a position to command a war against enemy forces, and you DON'T study this book THOROUGHLY, you're probably going to die. Horribly. And all your country's women, children, and probably most of the men will be raped and slaughtered in such gruesome manner as to make those easily victorious soldiers who just did the raping and slaughtering vomit from their own gruesomeness.

2500 سال پیش مردی به نام “سان تزو” تصمیم میگیرد تمام تعالیم جنگی اش را مکتوب کند. او کتابی مینویسد و به پادشاه وقت پیشکش میکند و نام اش را “هنر جنگ” مینامد و این کتاب تبدیل به کتاب شماره یک تاریخی در حوزه جنگاوری دنیا میشود که حتی در حوزه موفقیت, کسب و کار و تجارت نیز بسط داده میشود…
کتاب هنر جنگ یک کتاب کوچک و ساده با 13 فصل است. در هر فصلی استراتژی و تاکتیک های جنگی گنجانده شده است که باید فرمانده نیروی زمینی از آن پیروی کند تا بر دشمن پیروز شود. این کتاب برای اولین بار از چینی به فرانسوی ترجمه شد و سپس توجه فرماندهان انگلیسی را جلب کرد و در سال 1905 به انگلیسی نیز ترجمه شد.
سان تزو معتقد بود جنگ باعث ضرر اقتصادی میشود و حد الامکان نباید وارد جنگ شد مگر برای پیروزی و به گفته خودش
” پادشاهی که در 100 جنگ 100 بار پیروز شده کاری مضحک انجام داده. هر فرماندهی باید قبل ازینکه دشمن برایش تهدیدی به حساب بیاید نابودش کند… ”
این کتاب حاوی استراتژی هایی برای پیروزی است؛ پیروزی در هر جایی.
پیروزی فقط مختص به جنگ های انسانی نیست. در هر عرصه ای از زندگی باید پیروز باشیم؛ زندگی, ورزش, درس ,تجارت و … این کتاب اصول پیروزی را می آموزد

'

My wife says watching me read The Art of War is like watching Danny DeVito read The Joy of Sex. I'm not sure how to take that.

Bottom line, I'm a lover not a fighter. I started this because I know that many people love this work and say they get a lot out of it. But it became clear to me after quite a few pages that The Art of War really is about fighting a war no matter what other people might interpret it to be. So I'm not interested.

Besides the two things I need to know about fighting I learned from The Princess Bride...

1. Never get into a land war in Indo-China.

2. Never make a bet involving death with a Sicilian.

n  The wise warrior avoids the battle.n

I can't think in a better quote to begin this review.

Sometimes, reading books about war tactics or novels of the genre of war, is confused with glorify wars, destruction, death and all sad things that are results of a war. But, at least, in my case (I can't speak for others) it's not that. I don't glorify war. One of my favorite historical subjects is World War II, but it's not because an insane instinct of glorify war. I just support the concept that any person who forget the past or don't doing anything to learn about the past, he/she will be cursed to repeat history.

n  The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.n

In the case of this particular book, The Art of War, besides the obvious reading by people in military careers, it's a recommended lecture to people in areas such as business, in special for management, and certainly you can apply many of the lessons of the book to almost any field of interaction with others where a "victory" is involved.

n  All warfare is based on deception.n

Without deception, the WWII couldn't be won, since while the real invading forces of D-Day were arriving to Normandy's beaches, the core of Nazi's forces were in other place falling to false messages and even a false settlement with even fake tanks that in pictures taken from the air looked like the real deal.

n  There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.n

Hard lessons about this can be learn from the conflict in Vietnam, just to name the quickest example that came to my mind.

n  So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong, and strike at what is weak.n

Giving a rest to the horrors of real wars, this lesson is an interesting explanation of why adventure stories are always so captivating. Since, you never saw a "hero" facing a weak opponent. In real life is quite wise and logical to do it, but in fictional literature? Oh, you always read about the underdog battling against the odds and fighting a very stronger enemy. I guess that sometimes logic can be boring against the excitement of tall challenges.

n  There are five dangerous faults which may affect a general:
(1) Recklessness, which leads to destruction;
(2) cowardice, which leads to capture;
(3) a hasty temper, which can be provoked by insults;
(4) a delicacy of honor which is sensitive to shame;
(5) over-solicitude for his men, which exposes him to worry and trouble.n

Easily this can be the fragment that I liked the most to read in this book, since after reading it, well, my first thought was about Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation, since in fiction, usually almost any leading character hardly will fall to the fault #2, but many times, for the sake of excitement and showing daring scenes, some leaders are faulty to one of more than one of those mentioned faults. Again, the conflict between practical logic against excitement.

A good example of lessons about war and leadership can be seen in the recent film Dawn of the Planet of the Apes where in a film industry willing to give as much warfare and destruction without delay for the sake of selling tickets, in this movie, you can watch to "Caesar", the leader of the rising Ape community and his struggles to avoid war at all costs since he knows well how hard and costly can be the losses of any war, not matter if you resulted in the "victorious" one.

Sadly, wars is part of the humankind, since I think that even in those so-called "peace times", always, in some place, in a small scale or in a bigger scale, there has been a war. So, learning how to avoid a war, and if you have to do it, learning how to carry it out with the fewer loss of human lives (of both sides of the conflict), always is a relevant topic.

The Art of War is often referenced in other books and movies as being a great source of information on how to strategize in business as well as war. I believe Donald Trump has raved about it more than once as something that has helped him build his, um, "empire".

The first section is the Lionel Giles' translation of Sun Tzu's masterpiece; the second section is also Lionel Giles' translation of Sun Tzu's masterpiece, with his own interpretations interspersed throughout the reading. Essentially one gets to read The Art of War twice, the second time taking longer because of the notes after every couple of statements.

While interesting to read in a historical sense, reading it today for anything other than its historical context smells a little fishy to me. As usual a classic piece of literature has been taken, re-worked, re-interpreted and totally blinged out to pigeonhole it so it is somehow pertinent to society now. In this case it was adopted by business moguls as a way to learn how to become ruthless men and women. Granted there are a couple of "leadership" discussions that could be useful in an office setting, but ultimately they are generally common sense sorts of issues: If the leader is weak, the soldiers will be insubordinate.

Really?

Other things, such as not fighting in the brush or in water, are so painfully obvious that it's hard for my crusted-up third eye to open. People comment on the genius of Sun Tzu's words, which may have packed more of a punch 2500 years ago than it does today, but people also comment on Yogi Berra's genius as well. When asked about the things Yogi Berra would say that were considered to be deep and profound, he would often remark that he had no idea he was being clever. He was just commenting on obvious facts, that's how his brain works.

Reading The Art of War now reminded me a lot of that. Maybe Sun Tzu was just an early Yogi Berra.