A review by robertrivasplata
The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China by Ralph D. Sawyer

challenging informative mysterious slow-paced

4.5

Despite the best efforts of the translator's introductions, the appendices, and the ever-helpful and extensive endnotes, I feel like I would have gotten more out of these books if I had a better handle on ancient Chinese history and philosophies (such as Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism, & Mohism), so good thing I'm not studying to test into a position in the Emperor's army. I'd probably need to go back to the Art of War to get a handle on Shih, Ch'uan, and Hsing. I also feel like I would have gotten more out of this book if I had been looking for something in particular (kind of the opposite of Darryl Zero/Sherlock Holmes investigative approach), but instead I just read to see what I would find. I found many references to many types of fortification. 

The main message of all of these works is that the most important part of the battle is the preparation, and the most important part of an army is the government behind it. I found odd the suggestion from Sun Tzu, Wu Tzu, and others to choose battle on ground that your army can't escape from to make them fight harder. I guess you can read it as “only fight when you know you'll win.” Taigong's Six Secret Teachings (specifically, Martial Secret Teachings) instructions for how to subvert a state is a pretty good general description of the current politics of the United States. 

The marketing of Art of War in particular as some sort of business text strikes me as kind of perverse, seeing as Art of War is pretty explicit that the attitude and behavior appropriate for the military sphere is not appropriate outside of it. Also, now having read the Seven Military Classics, if I knew someone I was doing business was reading them, I would 100% not trust them. It would tell me that they potentially see the people they work with as either adversaries to be manipulated, or as minions to be awed into submission. This is just a job, I'm not buying your awesomeness, bro. I wonder what the corporate equivalent to the ancestral temple is. 

As a non-Chinese speaker, I think I prefer Pinyin to Wade-Giles, and I wish there was a Pinyin Romanization Glossary.