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Jul 20, 2018gomiami1972 rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
It gets 3 1/2 stars for two main reasons. First, I accept that some information is lost in translation but this is not a translation but a transliteration, which makes it even more dubious that I am getting the author's words and meanings rather than the translator's. This is the third version I have read and all three WIDELY differ. All of them contain stunning material but are these the thoughts of a Chinese general 2,500 years ago or the thoughts of a 20th century individual? Even native Chinese speakers can't agree on the meaning of certain characters. Second, the text is obviously corrupt in many ways. Whole sections appear to be missing and, in a few chapters, other Chinese authors (albeit Chinese authors from antiquity) have inserted material. This is not surprising given the age of the text so this is not a criticism...it simply is a fact. Overall, despite these limitations, The Art of War is a tremendous read, more for what it does not say rather than what it spells out, giving the reader head space to draw our own conclusions. Such a shame that the full, original text is not extant.