With worldwide focus on the strategies used to win the Gulf War, here is a guide to ancient Oriental stratagems and their relevance today. Swiss sinologist Harro von Senger has brought together an invaluable guidebook for the West, illustrating the traditional strategic rules and survival schemes used by the Chinese for thousands of years.
"The Stratagems of Sun Tzu" is a timeless guide to the art of war and strategic thinking, attributed to the legendary Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. This ancient text offers profound insights into the nature of conflict, leadership, and the psychology of warfare. Filled with wisdom and practical advice, it explores the strategic principles that have influenced military leaders, business executives, and political thinkers for centuries. Sun Tzu's stratagems continue to be studied and applied in various fields, making this book an essential resource for anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of competition and achieve success in the face of adversity.
"He who knows not the stratagems is respectable, but he who plays no stratagems in spite of knowing them deserves more respect." In 36 Stratagems Plus, authors Douglas S. Tung and Teresa K. Tung provide a unique collection of ancient Chinese tactics that describe some of the cunning and subtle stratagems-a strategic plan that contains a trap or a ruse for the enemy. Many of these stratagems had their origins in events that occurred during the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) and the Three Kingdoms Period (220-280) in China. This collection includes sixty stratagems that illustrate the enlightened exploitation of strategic power. For each stratagem, the Tungs present an eclectic discussion of its theme, the classic Chinese case supplemented by two international cases to illustrate the use of these strategic acts by other nationalities. They then trace its source which is usually the exploit of some of the Chinese generals, statesmen, and ordinary people. The source may be from The Art of War. 36 Stratagems Plus demonstrates that it is not the quantity of stratagems that matter, but rather the way in which they are deployed.
"F.G. Bailey’s classic political-anthropology text is reissued here with a Postscript that comments critically on the book’s scope, its reception, and its uses. First published in 1969, Stratagems and"
Written by the acclaimed general Sextus Julius Frontinus, Strategemata, is a succinct articulation of strategies to use during war time in the high Roman Empire. Frontinus bringings his sharp, practical mind to military history, offing commentary on many military tactics used by some of the greatest generals in of the Ancient World. The text was a teaching guide, one that was to be a companion to another of his works, The Art of War, a text currently lost to history. The C.E. Bennett translation offer a quick and compelling read, one littered with equally as compelling footnotes. This is The Strategemata.
Four hundred years of Roman military strategy in the palm of your hand The choice of these two works – Stratagems and On Military Matters in one volume allows the reader a bookend of Roman military theory and style. Stratagem was written in the first century AD by noted engineer and soldier, Sextus Julius Frontius. Rather than a specific outline of tactics, it is examples of strategies employed by other generals over time that could be, presumably learned by commanders and applied as the situation arose. This is somewhat similar to the style Plutarch uses in describing the lives of the notable Greeks and Romans in his book, Parallel Lives. On Military Matter, on the other hand, was written near the end of the western Empire in the fourth century AD, as a manual of how an army should be organized and used. Little is known about its author, Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, beyond this work and another on veterinary medicine.