The Art of War

By: Sun Tzu, Thomas Cleary, Thomas Cleary - translator

Narrated by: Lloyd James

For more than 2,000 years, Sun Tzu's The Art of War has provided leaders with essential advice on battlefield tactics, managing troops and terrain, and employing cunning and deception. An elemental part of Chinese culture, it has also become a touchstone for the Western struggle for survival and success, whether in battle, in business or in relationships. Now, in this crisp, accessible new translation, John Minford brings this seminal work to life for today's readers. A lively, learned introduction, chronologies and suggested further reading are among the valuable apparatus included in this authoritative volume. Even those readers familiar with The Art of War will experience it anew, finding it more fascinating - and more chilling - than ever.

Little is known about Sun Tzu (544-496 B.C.) and his life during the Warring States period after the decline of the Zhou dysnasty, but his classic, The Art of War, has been one of the central works of Chinese literature for 2500 years.

John Minford studied Chinese at Oxford and at the Australian National University and has taught in China, Hong Kong, and New Zealand. He edited (with Geremie Barme) Seeds of Fire: Chinese Voices of Conscience and (with Joseph S. M. Lau) Chinese Classical Literature: An Anthology of Translations. He has translated numerous works from the Chinese, including the last two volumes of the Penguin Classics edition of Cao Xueqin's eighteenth-century novel The Story of the Stone and the martial-arts fiction of the contemporary Hong Kong novelist Louis Cha.

Critic reviews

“Like Thucydides, [Sun Tzu] has a reputation today at least as great as it was well over two millennia ago . . . Given the peculiarly personal acumen and insight that inform Sun Tzu’s brief, sometimes enigmatic, but always practical Art of War . . . we are surely reading the words of an acutely intelligent military man with a subtle, original mind and a wealth of experience all his own.”
—from the Introduction by Peter Harris

this was a great book .

every time i come back to listen I learn something new. I recommend it 👍

did not match my book

this audio book is claimed to be translated by thomas cleary but the set up of the book is different

Not the same as the actual book

This version is not the same as the actual book translated by Thomas Cleary. I planned to read along, but it is not possible due to so many parts being cut out.

Missing pieces

I tried to listen along while reading the book and it turns out that this was a waste of money because it cuts out whole paragraphs and sentences. Incredibly disappointing.