The Master of Strategy Collection: The Art of War & The Book of Five Rings, AOG Edition by Sun TzuMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Performance: ***
Story: ***
The Art of War by Sun Tzu is a famous military/strategy treatise composed of 13 chapters devoted to various skills related to war. While the translation appears to be good, the advise provided is primarily general (and somewhat obvious) maxims, without any specific or practical information or examples on how to execute each stratagem … making this very small manual more of an outline/checklist that is of marginal use by itself (IMHO the reputation of this work far exceeds its utility; however, it works as an introduction and/or entertainment). After each chapter, the author adds a few discussion questions that are also interesting and points to some of the hidden concepts within each precept, but are difficult to fully take advantage of in the audible format. The narration is actually pretty good for such an academic and dry topic (so only one “voice” / character that you would expect within a story/novel).
The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi is another famous martial treatise that attempts to extend sword tactics into battle strategies (bottom up vs top down from Art of War). As such, there are more specific or practice instructions, but very little help in how to apply this knowledge more generally on the battle field. Here Musashi’s primary focus appears to be individual/internal disciple and the superiority of the sword over all other weapons (except the gun). The treatise is divided into five (5) books: Earth (Training), Water (Style), Fire (Timing), Wind (Flaws), Void (Mind). Over all, the work was interesting and interesting; although, I puzzled a bit over some of the translation choices.
Over all the complete package was short and entertaining, but not really something I would use to learn strategy beyond a basic introduction. For that I was turn to more contemporary sources for modern warfare such as Von Clausewitz.
I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
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