Sun Tzu in the West

Peter Lorge is Associate Professor of Pre-Modern Chinese and Military History at Vanderbilt University. His previous books include Chinese Martial Arts: From Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century and The Asian Military Revolution.

• Acknowledgments; List of images; Introduction; 1. A brief history of Sunzi in China; 2. Journey to the West; 3. The armchair captain; 4. Stilwell, Chiang Kai-Shek and World War II; 5. The China Marines; 6. The captain who taught a general; 7. 'The concentrated essence of wisdom on the conduct of war'; 8. The reaction to Griffith's Sunzi translation; 9. Robert Asprey, John Boyd and Sunzi; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

'In this lively, engaging and terrific book, Peter Lorge tells the fascinating and untold story of just how Sun Zi came to be perhaps most well-known strategist in the West today. Along the way, Lorge details the many ways in which Sun Zi's Art of War has been misread and misused – and how its connection to China and Chinese military history have been, ironically, overlooked. Anyone with an impulse to either quote or invoke Sun Zi, or use him to understand China's current military strategy, should read this book first.' M. Taylor Fravel, Massachusetts Institute for Technology