Kirkus Review
A clever, incisive look at great battles from Saratoga to the American invasion of North Korea at Inchon and their success or failure as per the principles of Sun Tzu'sThe Art of War.Sun Tzu's work, which appeared 2,400 years ago and has profoundly influenced Asian warfare for centuries, is full of axioms about military strategy, especially keeping a strong hand by striking the weak, and achieving success by indirect means, rather than direct. Mao Zedong apparently drew on Sun Tzu's strategies in his effective guerrilla warfare against the Nationalists, and only then did Sun Tzu come to the attention of the West, translated by retired general Samuel B. Griffith in the 1960s. Military historian Alexander (Inside the Nazi War Machine: How Three Generals Unleashed Hitler's Blitzkrieg Upon the World, 2010, etc.) fashions an accessible narrativeabout the world's most fascinating battles and how they were won or lost, according to the Chinese sage. For example, the Colonial American way of fighting the Britishhiding behind trees and picking off the bright lines of stand-up mercenarieswould have won high marks from Sun Tzu. The British, however, failed to follow the most important maxims of war: Devise a practical plan to gain victory, advance into the enemy's "vacuities" and know when to retreat. Napoleon, usually a master at striking indirectly, violated several of Sun Tzu's maxims at Waterloonamely, reliance on lame, sycophantic generals and waging a frontal attack into the bulwark of Wellington's armyand was submerged. Robert E. Lee, repeatedly ignoring the Sun Tzulike advice of Stonewall Jackson, insisted on aggressive, direct and, ultimately, disastrous assaults. Alexander also examines other famous violations of Sun Tzu's principles, including at the Marne 1914, Stalingrad and the Allied invasion of Normandy.A work as much fun to read as it is knowledgeable and authoritative.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The vogue for Sun Tzu's The Art of War, of which there are innumerable translations in print, continues with Alexander's applications of its axioms to several battles of modern times. Also on display is Alexander's penchant for counterfactual history (How Hitler Could Have Won World War II, 2000), which will pique military-history readers as Alexander imparts different scenarios for how the Revolutionary War, Waterloo, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, and the Korean War could have turned out. In every case imagining what the ancient sage would have thought about generals' conduct of these battles, Alexander avoids tactical aspects, focusing, as Master Sun would have, on the strategic campaigns that brought them about. The purest embodiment of Sun's principles, argues Alexander, is Stonewall Jackson's Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862. Nearly all the other captains cited in this work provoke reproofs from Alexander as Sun Tzu's avatar. Using Sun Tzu's precepts of zheng (orthodox force) and qi (unorthodox force) to unlock his analyses, Alexander may have his audience pronouncing in no time about what Lee should have done at Gettysburg.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2010 Booklist
