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Book Review "The Art of War": A book that will help you to confront conflicts

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Let me tell you an incident of my life at first. I opened my Facebook account in early 2018. After creating an account in one of the most popular social media, I started daydreaming that I would eliminate injustices as well as bad people from my surrounding area (e.g. my school). At that time, I thought I would become the saviour of the oppressed, downtrodden people by using a great weapon named a Facebook account.

Well, I used that weapon a lot to take a dig at the teacher who used to utter slangs towards the students in the classroom, the person who claimed all that noble in the world are done by the backbenchers, the flatterer who would lick anyone’s arse for a penny etc. All of these "noble deeds" resulted in "Mierda". Moreover, I gained some unwanted attention and got involved in some conflicts that hampered my mental peace.

After reading the first two paragraphs, you might have become bored. You are probably thinking, "why has this cabrón written this bullshit in a book review?" Tranquilo, amigo. "The Art of War" is one of the oldest military treatises of the world. It was written about 2500 years ago by a Chinese warrior named Sun Tzu (There are disagreements about the time among scholars, but 2500 years in commonly used). Sun Tzu was regarded as a great commander at that time. He had an amazing encounter with  Ho-lü, the King of Wu, which justifies his efficiency as a commander. You can simply search "Sun Tzu and the Concubines" to learn about that interesting incident.

"The Art of War" is divided into thirteen chapters. Each chapter contains information about an element of war. The book discusses almost everything related to war, from planning to victory.

The speciality of "The Art of War" is that it does not promote unnecessary wars. It is strongly advised in the book that "The greatest art of war is to subdue enemies without fighting them". On the other hand, the book which moulded European military thought in the era preceding the First World War was " On War" by Clausewitz. It supported violence at utmost bounds during a war that allegedly brought about great destruction during the world war.

The translation that I read was by Lionel Giles. The translation was very fluent to read. The negative point is that the book did not provide any explanation of Sun Tzu's words. Giles only translated them from Chinese to English. However,  I liked the book, its topics and ideas. But the last part of the twelfth chapter seemed irrelevant to the heading "Attack by Fire". When I was reading the book, the only thought that came to my mind was why I didn't read the book earlier. Had I read the earlier, I would have easily avoided the conflicts mentioned in the first part of the post. The learning outcomes of the book might also help you to improve your personal productivity. The book is also read by many business strategists of different companies. It serves as a lesson about management and leadership. I strongly recommend you to read it.


At a glance :


Name: The Art of War
Author: Sun Tzu (Translated by Lionel Giles)
Number of pages: 62
Publisher: Allandale Online Publishing
Price: Free (public domain)

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