Art of War (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (61 page)

When Sun Tzu composed his treatise, wars were dictated by kings and run by elites. The world over, they were fought for territory or other gain. Education was predicated on knowledge of the “classics” that, West or East, focused in large part on a literature bound up in tales of war. Thoroughgoing training in strategy was part of a proper education, and dabbling in military history was a common hobby of members of the upper classes and informed their rhetorical oratory.

The education of the upper classes continued to emphasize the classics and war through the late nineteenth century, when our translator, Lionel Giles, began his singular work in England. While he labored to bridge the vast differences in history, language, and customs between his readers and Sun Tzu, Giles was in important respects working from a similar mind-set: He was well-read in the classics of Greece and Rome, deeply trained in military history, and aware of the foibles of contemporary politics and policies—not to mention being a great sinologist in his own right and the son of another.

But today, as armchair warriors, we must search Western and Eastern sources for the references that will bring Sun Tzu’s text to meaningful life. This list of suggested sources, which ranges over a number of disciplines, includes works written by the founders of Western civilized thought at the time Sun Tzu was composing
The Art of War
and works with insights into the lives of those who fight. The section concludes with a list of Internet sources that lead through hyperlinks to a suite of related disciplines, and films that offer graphic depictions of the complexities of the ancient Asian warrior ethic.

de Bary, William Theodore, Wing-tsit Chan, and Burton Watson, eds.
Sources of Chinese Tradition
. Vol. 1 in the series
Introduction to Oriental Civilizations
. New York: Columbia University Press, 1964. One of the great research tools for students of Asian affairs.

Hawkes, David.
Ch’u Tz’u: The Songs of the South
. Oxford: Clar-endon Press, 1959. Beautiful translations of songs from one of the five Confucian classics,
The Book of Songs
.

Kitagawa, Joseph M., ed.
The Religious Traditions of Asia
. New York: Macmillan, 1989.

Payne, Robert.
Mao Tse-Tung
. 1950. New York: Weybright and Talley, 1969. A superlative biography and fount of unusual insights, historical comparisons, personal encounters, poetry, and research on the military strategies of one of the seminal figures of the twentieth century. Mao used his knowledge of
The Art of War
to fend off the invading Japanese in World War II and to beat Chiang Kai-chek, another aficionado of Sun Tzu, in China’s civil war. Payne provides extraordinary sociological insight into life in China and the workings of military strategy.

———.
A Rage for China
. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977. Reminiscences of a witness to some of the most important events of twentieth-century Chinese history.

———.
The White Pony
. New York: John Day, 1947. Songs and poetry that would have been heard by Sun Tzu. Called
Ch’u
songs and
Yüeh fu
ballads, they are translated by Payne and some of China’s best mid-twentieth-century poets and scholars.

Waley, Arthur.
The Book of Songs
. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1937. Also known as
The Book of Odes
. One of the five Classics of Confucius, translated for the general reader, and one of the first—and perhaps the most accessible, after Payne’s
The White Pony
—
of all early Chinese poetry works in English. Like Lionel Giles, Waley was a great pioneer of translation from Chinese to English.

Watson, Burton.
Early Chinese Literature
. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962. A seminal work of history and criticism; an essential research tool.

———, trans.
Courtier and Commoner in Ancient China: Selections from the History of the Former Han by Pan Ku
. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977. Pan Ku’s celebrated and influential work has been a model for dynastic history since its appearance in the first century A.D. Translated by a legendary author whose scholarship is breathtaking.

———, trans.
Records of the Grand Historian of China: Translated from the Shih chi of Ssu-ma Chi’en
. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961. The great history of early China; sets the standard for all subsequent historical writing in the East. Filled with fascinating, sometimes amusing, often horrifying, anecdotes of life, war, and mini-biographies, this book has been compared to Plutarch’s
Lives
.

Of the scores of versions of
The Art of War
that have been published in the United States since the 1960s, a considerable number use the book as a jumping-off point for their own purposes—mainly, how to win: in business, film-making, martial arts, litigation. Here are some of the better editions.

 

Ames, Roger T.
Sun Tzu: The Art of Warfare
. New York: Bal-lantine Books, 1993. Contains both the original Chinese text and the English translation. Ames was the first to publish a version based on the Yin Chüeh Shan text—ancient bamboo strips found in Linyi, China, in 1972; provides a fair amount of cultural and philosophical background.

Clavell, James.
The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
. New York: Dela-corte Press, 1983. The Lionel Giles version as emended and rewritten by Clavell.

Cleary, Thomas.
The Art of War
. Boston: Shambhala, 1988. Cleary is a good translator, and his introductions are superlative.

———.
The Lost Art of War
. San Francisco: HarperSan-Francisco, 1996. Also known as
The Art of War II
and
Sun Tzu II
—written by Sun Pin, said to be a descendant of Sun Tzu.

Denma Translation Group.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War: A New Translation
. Boston: Shambhala, 2001. The most recent and authoritative translation; includes valuable explanatory essays and a commentary. The translators used a version of the text known as the Yin Chüeh Shan, the oldest version ever found, dating from c.140-118 B.C.; it was copied onto thin bamboo strips, preserved for centuries, and discovered in 1972.

Griffith, Samuel B.
Sun Tzu: The Art of War
. With a foreword by B. H. Liddell Hart. New York: Oxford University Press, 1963. Griffith is an expert in the analysis of military matters who also provides an analysis of Sun Tzu’s influence on Mao Tse-tung and the Japanese military. Liddell Hart is also a brilliant writer on military affairs.

Sawyer, Ralph D., and Mei-chün Lee Sawyer.
Sun Tzu: The Art of War
. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1994. For readers interested in Chinese history and military weaponry.

Wing, R. L.
The Art of Strategy
. New York: Doubleday, 1988.
The Art of War
with commentary that focuses on the strategic realm; suggests that war not be waged save to preserve one’s territory.

Ambrose, Stephen E.
American Heritage New History of World War II
. Revised and updated by Stephen Ambrose based on the original text by C. L. Sulzberger. New York: Viking Press, 1997.

Cairnes, William E., and David G. Chandler.
The Military Maxims of Napoleon
. New York: Da Capo Press, 1995. Chandler updates the edition of Napoleon’s maxims produced in 1901 by Cairnes and provides further commentary.

Churchill, Winston.
The Second World War
. 6 vols. London: Cassell, 1948-1954. An invaluable account by Britain’s wartime prime minister and an architect of the Allied victory.

Clough, A. H., ed.
Plutarch: Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans
. Translated by John Dryden. New York: Modern Library, 1992.

Cook, Haruko Taya, and Theodore F. Cook.
Japan at War: An Oral History
. New York: New Press, 1992.

Freedman, Lawrence, ed.
War
. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. A formidable collection of essays by renowned scholars.

Handel, Michael I.
Masters of War: Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, and Jomini
. Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1992. Compares Sun Tzu’s approach with that of two great nineteenth-century military thinkers. General Baron Antoine-Henri de Jomini was a French-Swiss commander who served under Napoleon and later the czar; his approach to strategy focused on speed, agility, and an aggressive offense. Von Clausewitz, the great Prussian theorist, was strong on defense; he believed wars are won by attrition, inducing the enemy into massive affairs in which the last man standing wins. Handel suggests neither stands the test of time as Sun Tzu has.

Hastings, Max.
The Korean War
. New York: Simon and Schus-ter, 1987.

Machiavelli, Niccolò.
The Art of War
. 1521. A revised edition of the Ellis Farneworth translation; with an introduction by Neal Wood. New York: Da Capo Press, 1990.

———.
The Prince
. 1532. Translated, edited, and with an introduction by Daniel Donno. New York: Bantam Classics, 1984. Many other good editions are also available.

McClintock, Michael.
Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counter-terrorism, 1940- 1990
. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992. Explores principles of
The Art of War
that have intrigued U.S. guerrilla-warfare strategists for a half century.

Musashi, Miyamoto.
A Book of Five Rings
. Translated by Victor Harris. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1992. Written in 1645 by a renowned swordsman and wandering samurai (ronin), Japan’s great contribution to strategic theory is recommended for those who seek mobility in a tightly structured hierarchy.

Roberts, J. M.
A Short History of the World
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Ropp, Theodore.
War in the Modern World
. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1959.

Sawyer, Ralph, and Mei-chun Lee Sawyer.
The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China
. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993.

Tuchman, Barbara.
The Guns of August
. 1962. New York: Bal-lantine Books, 1994. On World War I and its inception.

Von Clausewitz, Carl.
On War
. 1833. Edited and translated by Peter Paret and Michael Howard. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.

There are scores of relevant military websites on the Internet, and many dedicated solely to
The Art of War
and Asia studies.

 

www.belisarius.com
:
This site’s primary focus is business, but it takes a decidedly military stance.

 

www.d-n-i.net
: This is home to Defense and the National Interest, a business and military information site. It devotes considerable space to the work of legendary pilot and designer Colonel John Boyd (U.S. Air Force), who developed three influential, mathematically coherent combat theories: agility, maneuver warfare strategy, and the system referred to by the acronym OODA (observe, orient, decide, act)—all based on his experiences as a fighter pilot and his intense study of
The Art of War
and other classic works on military strategy.

 

www.dmoz.org/Arts/Literature/World_Literature/Chinese/Sun_Tzu
: This is the locale for Sun Tzu at the Open Directory Project (ODP). It provides scores of hyperlinks to wonderful websites dedicated to military history, Asian studies, and literature—all suggested by Sun Tzu and
The Art of War
. A valuable site for other subjects as well.

 

www.Sonshi.com
: The best site for newly minted aficionados. With book reviews, news bulletins, and a conversational tone, it is the most accessible and provides hyperlinks to some of the better sites dedicated to Sun Tzu and Eastern philosophical systems.

 

www.VictoryOverWar.com
: Formed by the Denma Translation Group—led by scholars Kidder Smith, an author and professor at Bowdoin College, and James Gimian, publisher of
Shambhala Sun
—this beautiful, thought-provoking site brings together important literary, philosophical, and cultural components to create a sense of Sun Tzu’s larger project. The site is frequently updated.

 

www.vikingphoenix.com/SunTzu
: Dedicated to military books and source materials in every mode.

Film, granted its romanticism and lack of scholarly cachet, offers entrée, at least in simulacrum, to the world Sun Tzu wants us to understand. As works of art, films can evoke the tension, the fear, and the practical factors that plague combatants, such as incomplete information or supply lines, rotten weather, and general chaos. Moreover, when we are immersed in the clear tones of Sun Tzu’s prose, it is difficult to remember the psychological atmosphere—the intrigues, the pride, and the urgency—that press the decision to fight. Movies readily deliver this atmosphere and also offer valuable insights into other cultures and other times.

With the exception of the kung-fu genre, the studios of China and Taiwan have not produced significant films for international audiences that depict the sage commander in battle or in other ways interpret the history or present the cultural backdrop of
The Art of War
. But given the Chinese national love affair with history, art, and philosophy, this will doubtless change. Meanwhile,
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
(2000), an American production directed by Ang Lee and based on the novel by Wang Du Lu, is a brilliant exploration by a Chinese director of many of the Taoist themes in Sun Tzu. At the time of the film’s release, Ang Lee said, “My team and I chose the most populist genre, the martial arts film of Hong Kong, as an instrument, a way to investigate the cultural inheritance of China . . . and the passing on of that Taoist tradition from generation to generation.” He succeeded.
Crouching Tiger
also illustrates the implicit concepts of honor and duty as set forth in
The Art of War
.