"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all."
--Henry David Thoreau
Just Finished
The Art of War - The Barnes & Noble review
I do not doubt that Sun-Tzu's The Art of War is a classic worth studying, and a great source of wisdom on military tactics and strategy. Just do yourself a favor and skip this translation by Thomas Cleary.
Mr. Cleary seems enamored of himself as a translator. I have no doubt he knows how to translate, but I wanted to read Sun-Tzu, not Thomas Cleary translating Sun-Tzu and hosts of others so I could appreciate how clever Mr. Cleary is.
The book is laid out so:
Sun-Tzu said this.
- Here's a translation of So-and-so who says this about this.
- Someone else I translated says this.
- A few other persons I also translated have this to say.
Sun-Tzu said this, too.
- Here's a translation of what So-and-so says....
- ad infinitum
- ad nauseum
This is truly annoying when one wants to read only what the original author has to say. I tried going through and reading only the Sun-Tzu parts, but that didn't work well at all. This would be a good book for those who really want to get into the whole philosophy and study the various perspectives with which Sun-Tzu's words have been attributed throughout the centuries. This was not my purpose, so this book didn't suit me.
SET - 10/24/2000
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Plato - Selected Works Aristotle - Ethics; Politics; Poetics Mencius - The Book of Mencius |
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Here is The List that got me started. |
SET's Reviews
| Work | Author | Date |  |
| The Epic of Gilgamesh | Anonymous | ca. 2000 BC | |
| The Iliad | Homer | ca. 800 BC | |
| The Odyssey | Homer | ca. 800 BC | |
| The Analects | Confucius | 551-479 BC | |
| The Oresteia | Aeschylus | 525-456 BC | |
| Three Theban Plays | Sophocles | 496-406 BC | |
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Electra; Alcestis; Medea; Hippolytus; Bacchae; Women of Troy |
Euripides | 484-406 BC | |
| The Histories | Herodotus | 484-425 BC | |
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The History of the Peloponnesian War |
Thucydides | 470/460-ca.400 BC | |
| The Art of War | Sun-Tzu | 450-380 BC |
Resources
 KCWC's Library |
 The Western Canon |
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