A review by stefo
The Art of War by Sun Tzu

informative fast-paced

2.0

In my honest opinion this text is unbelievably useless in contemporary times in terms of applied knowledge. The only real merit here I see is historical documentation of sorts. If someone (who's not a history buff) were to proudly present this book on their shelf as a signifier of whatever I would have my immediate mental defenses up when talking to them about any form of culture or ways of thought. The only thing besides analyses by historians that this book presents to the reader is a vast number of quotes and "wisdoms" that are way too specific to be applied in personal pursuits (Although many people seem to believe that is the case. Hell, its so ridiculous that some people read this as a sort of business manual, which is incredibly absurd). And if we're talking about the text as pure prose then I can't comment much on it, this text has passed quite a lot of translations and has a lot of different variants with slight changes in wording which keeps me from enjoying the "words on a page" approach to literature. How does one even rate such a book? But more importantly "How does one enjoy it?" is the question that I currently cannot answer, and honestly care very little to find out.
Do not believe the mass that says this book is an essential read, it really isn't, Sun Tzu said.