Is There a Battle Strategy That Will Work?

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There are but two battle strategies, the conventional and the surprise. When used in combination, they produce an infinite number of variations. A surprise and convention engender one another like a bracelet or a ring with no beginning or end. To be prepared everywhere is to be strong nowhere.

We learn the art of military strategy, deception, and fire from Michael Nylan's 2020 translation of this classic text. We start by going in-depth on the contemporary political references in Nylan's Introduction to this edition, and then we go blow-by-blow and nugget-by-inspirational-nugget through Master Sun's timeless wisdom.

Here's translator Michael Nylan writing about the book for LitHub: "The Art of War is Actually a Manual on How to Avoid It."

Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.

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