3 pieces from Art of War — each retold in modern English and traced to its source.
The most famous chapter: to win a hundred battles is not the height of skill — to break the enemy without fighting is. Sun Tzu ranks the forms of victory from attacking plans down to the folly of besieging walls, and gives the line every strategist knows: know the enemy and know yourself.
Before a single sword is drawn, the war is already won or lost on the counting-table. Sun Tzu opens with the five things that decide every campaign, the seven questions that predict the winner, and the line the whole book turns on: all warfare is deception.
Foreknowledge wins wars, and it cannot be had from gods, omens or calculation — only from men. Sun Tzu’s last chapter is a cold manual of espionage: the five kinds of spy, the double agent who turns the whole web, and the truth that the best intelligence is the cheapest weapon there is.