The Art of War

War and Strategy
Ambrose, Stephen E. American Heritage New History of World War II. Revised and updated by
Stephen Ambrose based on the original text by C. L. Sulzberger. New York: Viking Press, 1997.
Cairnes, William E., and David G. Chandler. The Military Maxims of Napoleon. New York: Da Capo
Press, 1995. Chandler updates the edition of Napoleon’s maxims produced in 1901 by Cairnes and
provides further commentary.
Churchill, Winston. The Second World War. 6 vols. London: Cassell, 1948-1954. An invaluable
account by Britain’s wartime prime minister and an architect of the Allied victory.
Clough, A. H., ed. Plutarch: Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans. Translated by John Dryden. New
York: Modern Library, 1992.
Cook, Haruko Taya, and Theodore F. Cook. Japan at War: An Oral History. New York: New Press,
1992.
Freedman, Lawrence, ed. War. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. A formidable
collection of essays by renowned scholars.
Handel, Michael I. Masters of War: Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, and Jomini. Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1992.
Compares Sun Tzu’s approach with that of two great nineteenth-century military thinkers. General
Baron Antoine-Henri de Jomini was a French-Swiss commander who served under Napoleon and
later the czar; his approach to strategy focused on speed, agility, and an aggressive offense. Von
Clausewitz, the great Prussian theorist, was strong on defense; he believed wars are won by attrition,
inducing the enemy into massive affairs in which the last man standing wins. Handel suggests neither
stands the test of time as Sun Tzu has.
Hastings, Max. The Korean War. New York: Simon and Schus-ter, 1987.
Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Art of War. 1521. A revised edition of the Ellis Farneworth translation; with
an introduction by Neal Wood. New York: Da Capo Press, 1990.

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———. The Prince. 1532. Translated, edited, and with an introduction by Daniel Donno. New York:
Bantam Classics, 1984. Many other good editions are also available.
McClintock, Michael. Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and
Counter-terrorism, 1940- 1990. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992. Explores principles of The Art of
War that have intrigued U.S. guerrilla-warfare strategists for a half century.
Musashi, Miyamoto. A Book of Five Rings. Translated by Victor Harris. Woodstock, NY: Overlook
Press, 1992. Written in 1645 by a renowned swordsman and wandering samurai (ronin), Japan’s great
contribution to strategic theory is recommended for those who seek mobility in a tightly structured
hierarchy.
Roberts, J. M. A Short History of the World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Ropp, Theodore. War in the Modern World. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1959.
Sawyer, Ralph, and Mei-chun Lee Sawyer. The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China. Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 1993.
Tuchman, Barbara. The Guns of August. 1962. New York: Bal-lantine Books, 1994. On World War I
and its inception.
Von Clausewitz, Carl. On War. 1833. Edited and translated by Peter Paret and Michael Howard.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.
Web Sites
There are scores of relevant military websites on the Internet, and many dedicated solely to The Art of
War and Asia studies.