The Art of Warfare (Classics of Ancient China)
This is an essential text for any library with a research collection in Chinese history and philosophy, as it is the first translation of the military/philosophy work Sun-tzu ping fa to incorporate the five chapters unearthed by archaeologists in 1972 at Yin-chueh-shan in Shantung province, China. It is also the first English translation to use the 13-chapter version of Sun-tzu found in that same dig dated 1000 years prior to previously available texts. The translator, who heads the University of Hawai'i's Center for Chinese Studies, provides an elucidating introduction to the text, the excavations, and the authorship of Sun-tzu and describes its import as a philosophical text. The translation adds the romanized form for certain key translated terms, which some readers may find intrusive. Some of the translated fragments are so brief as to be impenetrable, but their inclusion results in a level of completeness never before reached in a translation of Sun-tzu. Since there was frequent mention of this book as Gordon Gekko's primer in the film Wall Street , there may be popular interest in it as well.--Ed.- D.E. Perushek, Univ. of Tennessee Libs., KnoxvilleCopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.