Winning Without Fighting: Sun Tzu and the Modern Man's Guide to Strategic Thinking: 8

What This Book Is, and Isn't This is not a translation of The Art of War. There are several good translations; recommendations are in the appendix. This is a practical manual that uses Sun Tzu's framework for the >Part 1 gives you the man and his text. Seven short chapters covering the China that produced him, what little is known about him personally, the famous demonstration with the king's concubines, the structure of the thirteen chapters, the long history of military application, the Western reception that began in the eighteenth century, and the still-active >Part 2 is the toolkit. Seven principles drawn from the thirteen chapters and adapted for the kinds of contests you actually face. Subdue without fighting. Know yourself and your opposition. The five fundamentals. Warfare as deception. Avoid strength, attack weakness. Shi - momentum and timing. The wise general's calculations. Each principle gets a full chapter showing what Sun Tzu said, what it looks like >Part 3 is application. The same five fields the other books in this series cover, viewed through Sun Tzu's lens. Career as strategic positioning. Marriage as alliance rather than combat. Body as long campaign. Sons as the next generation under your command. Conflict - the distinctive fifth field for Sun Tzu - covers how to handle actual disputes when they >Three appendices follow. A thirty-day practice plan. Key Sun Tzu quotations worth memorizing. Recommended reading for the man who wants to go deeper into Sun Tzu, into Chinese strategic culture more broadly, or into the modern >Read slowly. Sun Tzu is deceptive. The maxims look simple. They are not. Each one carries layers of implication that emerge only with re-reading. Many men have read The Art of War once and concluded they understood it. Almost none of them did. The understanding comes from applying the principles for years, watching them succeed in some situations and fail in others, and gradually developing the strategic instinct the text is trying to cultivate. Begin now. The reading will mature over decades.