THE SHADOW STRATEGIST – The Secrets of Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" told as a continuous book for the listener: all 383 maxims in their own order, from planning and calculation to fire and spies. With the stories of the Chinese commentators and examples from world history – Waterloo, Trafalgar, Sedan – the oldest book on strategy becomes a living portrait of one man's thinking about victory, defeat and responsibility for the lives of others.

"The art of war is a matter of life and death. A road either to safety or to ruin." More than two thousand years ago, the Chinese commander Sun Tzu set down 383 maxims on winning and defeating. Here they are told in their own order – the five factors, the seven considerations, the nine kinds of terrain, the five kinds of spies – together with the stories that have followed them down the centuries: the general who had his bravest soldier executed, the emperor who walked into the trap at Poteng, the snake in the Ch'ang mountains that strikes with its head when you hit its tail. A book about cunning, discipline, costs, and the dearly bought insight that the supreme art is to win without fighting.