cocoonofbooks 's review for:

The Art War by Sun Tzu

2.0

---

This book has been recommended to me on a number of occasions for its apparent applicability to various fields, from business to communication. However, I found that you really have to work hard to draw parallels between the statements about war and anything else. Most of this book is quite literally about the art of war, from how to tell whether an enemy has chariots or infantry by the pattern of the dust rising, to the many different types of terrain on which you might fight a battle. I feel like for what it is -- a treatise on the basics of waging a war in the 6th century BC -- it succeeds at being succinct, straightforward, and memorable. But for any modern applicability, you have to work too hard to stretch it; you're better off with an actual book from your particular field.