The Art of War, With Commentary

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Title: The Art of War

Series: None

Author: Sun Tzu

Translator: Lionel Giles & Bob Sutton

Rating: 1/2 of 5 Stars

Genre: Non-fiction

Pages: 155

 

 

My Thoughts:

This version,the Kindle Free Edition  [ASIN #B0084B050M], is the Lionel Giles translation [which seems to be ‘just’ about all there is out there] with his commentary and commentary from random Chinese literary figures.

My 1/2 Star rating was because the text was almost a solid wall of text, not differentiating in any way Sun Tzu’s writings and the commentaries. Nor were there paragraph breaks, nor real chapter breaks. These formatting factors made it almost impossible to read this.

The other main reason I gave this 1/2 Star was because of the commentaries themselves. Giles is an ass, period. I suspect he was an insufferable bore back whenever he was alive and that tone comes through in his commentary. Thank goodness he is dead and not ruining more historical texts today.

I am not in any way rating, reviewing or commenting on Sun Tzu’s actual work, as it was impossible to do so with this edition. That being said, I did pick up another edition at Barnes and Noble’s that has the non-commentary version included. Not quite the version I was looking for, but good enough for now. Hopefully with that edition I can actually talk about the text itself.

 

The next version I read, The Art of War, is much better!

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