2 pieces from Art of War — each retold in modern English and traced to its source.
Five ways to attack with fire, each waiting on the right wind and the right season. But the chapter turns, at its end, into the book’s gravest warning: never make war out of anger. A ruined state cannot be restored; the dead cannot be brought back to life.
War is the most expensive thing a state can do — a thousand chariots, a hundred thousand mailed men, gold pouring out by the day. So Sun Tzu’s second lesson is brutal arithmetic: win fast or not at all, feed your army off the enemy, and never mistake a long war for a glorious one.