Sun Tzu's The Art of War: The Original Text and a Decoding of the Art of Strategy

The ARDIS studio presents the audio book “Sun Tzu. The Art of War. Original Text and Transcription of the Art of Strategy”.

This edition is truly unusual: in the first section, two translations of Sun Tzu’s treatise “The Art of War” are brought together at once—both a fundamental work on strategic thinking that remains relevant to this day. One translation is made as close as possible to the Chinese original, while the second is based on a French edition and is published in Russian for the first time. It was the 1772 publication by Jean-Joseph Amiot that became the first widely known attempt to “read” the ancient text through the lens of Western European thought. Here you will see the practical, military interpretation of Sun Tzu’s concise formulas—something like an applied “deciphering” of his theses.

In the second section, there is a modern perspective: the text by entrepreneur Zhang Li, who works on business projects in China and the United States and is known as a business strategist and coach—“The Art of War” by Sun Tzu as a guide: The Art of Strategy, chapter by chapter. Each chapter of the treatise is “translated” into the language of today’s business—competition and markets, negotiations and launches, growth and crisis management. Such a reading helps turn ancient images and metaphors into clear principles of strategic thinking. Strategy is shown as a skill and a craft: to observe, to weigh options, to make choices, to act, to preserve resources, and to take responsibility for the result. And since a craft requires training, the book includes questionnaires for self-diagnosis, analyses of situational problems, and an examination of common misconceptions.

The book is intended for a wide range of readers interested in strategy, but it will be especially useful for managers and entrepreneurs. Its value lies in a dual lens: first, the idea sounds in the ancient text, and then it unfolds in modern practice. Military-historical examples help you understand the principles of strategy more precisely, while business cases—sometimes quite recent (up to 2025)—make the conclusions recognizable and applicable.