I just read an excellent translation of Sun Tzu's famous book The Art of War.  The translation itself is apparently well-known - by Lionel Giles in 1910.  But this edition of the book (published by Barnes & Noble - as an aside, I just read in the Wall Street Journal that B&N does about 10% of their book sales in books that they publish themselves - that doesn't seem good for the future of independent publishers, unless they also start selling direct, which, and this was the point of the article, is what Random House is thinking about doing - anyway ...) included tons of additional commentary that really made the whole thing very cool. 

The book actually has two complete versions of the Sun Tzu text - one laced with the commentary and one without.  The commentary itself is really what kept me turning the pages.  Don't get me wrong, the Sun Tzu portion of the text is amazing, but it's not very compelling prose, to say the least.

The great thing about the commentary was the stories relating the Sun Tzu text to other historical figures (e.g. ancient Chinese generals; Douglas MacArthur; Winston Churchill; etc.) and how their efforts succeeded or failed.  It's entertaining to read about some military leader who seemed to have disregarded the lessons of Sun Tzu and as a result got annihilated.  And likewise those who were successful.

One good story accompanies the following Sun Tzu lesson (paragraph 19 in the chapter entitled Energy).

 "Thus one who is skilful at keeping the enemy on the move maintains deceitful appearances, according to which the enemy will act."

The anecdote is of the general Sun Pin, sent by the Chi state in 341 B.C. to fight his arch-enemy Pang Chuan (I admit that keeping track of the Chinese names is a little challenging, but you get used to it).  Anyway, Sun Pin knew that his own state had a reputation for cowardice, but he decided to sucker the enemy based on that fact.  First, he marched his army into the vicinity of Pang Chuan's.  Then, over a series of nights while camped, he had his men light gradually fewer and fewer campfires.  Naturally, Pang Chuan saw this and figured that Sun Pin's army, being by reputation a bunch of cowards, was deserting.  So Pang Chuan decided to immediately chase Sun Pin.

Now it gets good.  Sun Pin immediately began to withdraw through a narrow portion of the terrain through which he knew his pursuer would be forced to come.  He posted a note on a tree in that area that said, "Under this tree shall Pang Chuan die."  That night, Pang Chuan came dashing through the forest in hot pursuit.  Little did he know that Sun Pin had left a group of archers at that sight with instructions to fire whenever they saw a light.  So Pang Chuan saw the note posted to the tree (all of the bark had been shaved off as well) and lit a torch in order to read it!  He was immediately killed by the archers and his army was routed.  Good stuff.

Just one other comment about Sun Tzu.  There are all these books out now about how you should run your business or be a better manager based on the lessons from The Art of War.  The thing is, Sun Tzu was literally writing about war - he wasn't writing about business.  But he is writing about leadership and I think the lessons are valuable from that perspective.  I recommend it.