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El arte de la guerra
El arte de la guerra
El arte de la guerra
Audiobook1 hour

El arte de la guerra

Written by Sun Tzu

Narrated by José Carlos Domínguez

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

La obra del general Sun Tzu no es únicamente un libro de práctica militar, sino un tratado que enseña la estrategia suprema de aplicar con sabiduría el conocimiento de la naturaleza humana en los momentos de confrontación. No es por tanto, un libro sobre la guerra: es una obra para comprender las raíces de un conflicto y buscar una solución.
LanguageEspañol
PublisherSAGA Egmont
Release dateApr 17, 2020
ISBN9788415677031
Author

Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu, also known as Sun Wu or Sunzi, was an ancient Chinese military strategist believed to be the author of the acclaimed military text, The Art of War. Details about Sun Tzu’s background and life are uncertain, although he is believed to have lived c. 544-496 BCE. Through The Art of War, Sun Tzu’s theories and strategies have influenced military leaders and campaigns throughout time, including the samurai of ancient and early-modern Japan, and more recently Ho Chi Minh of the Viet Cong and American generals Norman Swarzkopf, Jr. and Colin Powell during the Persian Gulf War in the 1990s.

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Reviews for El arte de la guerra

Rating: 3.874607309054556 out of 5 stars
4/5

3,501 ratings92 reviews

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Pretty dull going, even by audiobook. The narrators were great, though, and there were times that the footnotes saved me.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Me gustó mucho libro porque trata practicas militares,enseña estrategias de ataque y defensa.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Absolutely essential book to anyone's library. Can be read over and over again; it has a somewhat poetic style and it's an interesting insight, very inspirational.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Un excelente libro y la lectura le da la entonación correcta
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Tactics and strategies that apply to everyday life. This book is excellent reading to make you think about how to deal with the day to day struggles of life. It helps you position you versus your opponent. Your opponent need not be any one person. It could be a corporation. It could be an establishment. It could be a situation you are facing. I was once told that what you get out of a book is the effort you put into a book. It is my hope that this book can help someone master how they deal with day to day life. Let me know what you think. By the way, how many Enron or Worldcomm employees do you think read this book?

    On another note, I would ask that you do not take this book literally. It is laced with allegory and a ton of symbolism. Please take its contents and apply them to your life for the good of all.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A very quick read of a classic. I had always been meaning to get around to this book, and I did not realize how short it was. The version I have contains more commentary than the actual writing, and I did not bother with the commentary.

    The book is basically a series of maxims that describe how to lead as a general at war. I think its appeal is universal, and many of the ideas can be applied as strategic thinking in other aspects of life. I don't think it was all that profound, but then again, its ideas have been used for centuries. It was nice to be able to read where a lot of them came from.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally here.)The CCLaP 100: In which I read for the first time a hundred so-called "classics," then write essays on whether or not they deserve the label. The Art of War is essay #27 of this series.The story in a nutshell:More of a technical manual than a piece of general literature, The Art of War is a field guide of sorts by famed Chinese military leader Sun Tzu, written it's believed sometime in the 6th century BC (during the period when China was coming together as a unified empire for the first time in history), as a way of instructing other commanders how to have as much success on the battlefield as he had had. (And please know that there's a debate among scholars as well regarding whether Sun Tzu even wrote this book by himself, or if like many other classics from antiquity this isn't in fact a sly compilation, gathering up the best thoughts back then from amongst a whole group of military strategists.) Now of course let's not forget that Sun Tzu was a Taoist as well, so of course his particular advice is going to be Taoist in nature, a very important thing to understand in order to really "get" this book; he sees the best war, for example, as the one that's never actually fought, because you've already dismantled the enemy's forces through sabotage and cunning to the point where they can't put up a resistance in the first place. And so it is throughout this extremely slim book (which in fact is more like a long magazine article) -- chapter after chapter of surprisingly spiritual text concerning the fine art of getting what you want, even when other people are actively trying to stop you from doing so.The argument for it being a classic:It's a 2,500-year-old book still being read and studied on a daily basis, argue its fans; what more do you want? And in the meanwhile, it's influenced nearly every Western military leader since first being translated into a Romantic language (French) in 1782, racking up a whole list of self-declared admirers from Napoleon to Norman Schwarzkopf. And if this weren't enough, starting in the 1980s it also gained a whole new life as a surprisingly apt if not Machiavellian guide to the corporate business world, best typified by symbol-of-yuppie-greed Gordon Gekko from Oliver Stone's fantastic movie Wall Street, who is constantly walking around quoting from it as a way to justify his monstrous, inhuman actions. If all of this isn't enough to safely consider a book a classic, ask its fans, what is?The argument against:The case against this being a classic seems to be one used a lot with books over a thousand years old; that even if that book turns out to be historically important (and it usually does), it might be better at this point to actually study the book and how it affected society, not read the book itself for pleasure anymore. Always remember, that's part of how I'm defining "classic" here in this CCLaP 100 series, is not just how important that title has been to human history, but also whether it's worth literally sitting down and reading it page-for-page yourself, no matter if you have any specific interest in that book's subject or not. If it's yes on the former but no on the latter, as critics of this book claim, then by my definition it's not a classic, but rather simply a historically important book that should be studied by the general public but not necessarily read.My verdict:So let me start by admitting how surprisingly readable this is for being 2,500 years old, and that it really does translate metaphorically to the business world surprisingly elegantly; after all, since it's a guide to war written by a Taoist, it's more of a symbolic examination of how to get out of life what you want the most, even in the face of tough opposition, with advice that is surprisingly relevant to the modern world even when he's talking about the mechanics of medieval Asian warfare. (Just for one example, near the beginning he talks in one paragraph about how a successful commander will literally steal the food of their enemy, both to sap the enemy's strength and to avoid the burden of having to carry all that food to battle themselves; this may not seem to have much relevance to the modern business world at first, until you stop and think about it in terms of stealing talent from your competitors, literally the intellectual "food" nourishing their "army" of goods and services competing against your own.)That said, though, I think ultimately I'm going to have to side with the critics this time; that unless you're a military commander or corporate raider yourself, most people's eyes are going to quickly gloss over while trying to read this book, merely after the first few pages. Now, don't get me wrong, I definitely think this should be a primer for people who are getting into the profession themselves; this should for sure be a must-read not only for soldiers, for example, but also the politicians in charge of those soldiers' budgets. But this is a perfect example of the surprisingly complicated process of determining whether a book is a classic or not, the entire reason I started this essay series in the first place; because unless competitive strategy actually is your business, most people will find it more rewarding to spend their time reading up on how this book has affected history, and of the circumstances in ancient China that led to it getting written in the first place. There's really only one major lesson in The Art of War for a non-military general audience to get -- that most battles are won based on how well one can surprise the enemy, usually by deceiving them using their own weaknesses (to act incompetent when the enemy is haughty, for example, threatening when they're meek, picking them off at the edges when they outnumber you, destroying their supply lines when they're far from home); for those not interested in the nitty-gritty of how to actually accomplish such things, though, there's actually a lot more to be learned by studying how such a thing has been attempted over the centuries, making the book certainly important but not necessarily a classic.Is it a classic? No
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Muy buen audiolibro e interesante su contenido, en mi ver sería que la mejor guerra en la que no se libra.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Interesante. Nunca lo había leído, pero siempre me llamo la atención. Es cierto que si bien habla de la guerra, tiene otras aplicaciones. Hay conceptos que son un poco de sentido común, pero verlos complicados igualmente tiene otro valor.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    El tema de la estrategia y las consideraciones de los soldados y del contrincante.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A classic! Well worth the read, and looking forward to reading again in the future.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Indeholder "Making of Plans", "Waging of War", "Strategic Offensive", "Forms and Dispositions", "Potential Energy", "Empty and Full", "The Fray", "The Nine Changes", "On the March", "Forms of Terrain", "The Nine Kinds of Ground", "Attack by Fire", "Espionage"."Making of Plans" handler om ???"Waging of War" handler om ???"Strategic Offensive" handler om ???"Forms and Dispositions" handler om ???"Potential Energy" handler om ???"Empty and Full" handler om ???"The Fray" handler om ???"The Nine Changes" handler om ???"On the March" handler om ???"Forms of Terrain" handler om ???"The Nine Kinds of Ground" handler om ???"Attack by Fire" handler om ???"Espionage" handler om ???En glimrende klassiker om krig. Sun-tzu ved hvor ødelæggende krig er, så han foretrækker at undgå den.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A great translation. That was meant to be funny since I don't read Chinese and can't possibly really know how good his translation is. However, this is a great book and belongs right next to your other war strategy greats.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Excelente Libro debe ser uno de los principales en la lista de practicas de análisis y estrategia que aplica a todo en la vida.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Excelente libro, para escucharse varias veces y no olvidar todos los detalles
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Excelente obra de enseñanza para la vida. Lo recomiendo totalmente.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This is a manual and reads like one. Better to take in very small doses, digest and discuss rather than to read continuously.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Advice that I found interesting included:

    All warfare is based on deception, hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

    There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

    The captured soldiers should be kindly treated. This is called using the conquered foe to augment one’s own strength.

    In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good.

    It is the rule of war, if our forces are ten to the enemy’s one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous to divide our army into two. If equally matched, we can offer battle; if slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy; if quite unequal in every way, we can flee from him.

    You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended.

    Now a soldier’s spirit is keenest in the morning; by noonday it has begun to flag; and in the evening, his mind is bent only on returning to camp.

    When there is dust rising in a high column, it is the sign of chariots advancing; when the dust is low, but spread over a wide area, it betokens the approach of infantry. When it branches out in different directions, it shows that parties have been sent to collect firewood. A few clouds of dust moving to and fro signify that the army is encamping.

    If those [of the enemy] who are sent to draw water begin by drinking themselves, the army is suffering from thirst.

    If birds gather on any spot, it is unoccupied.

    If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it; if fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight even at the ruler’s bidding.

    No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique.

    Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory which is decided in a single day. This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy’s condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honours and emoluments [i.e. for spies], is the height of inhumanity.

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What I most remember and best learned from this is, find ways not to go to war, find ways not to fight whenever possible.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Vapid martial homilies.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I read the 1910 translation by Lionel Giles, available for free on the internet. This edition was complemented with notes offering commentary by a wide range of Chinese near-contemporaries who offered their examples, corollaries, etc. The translator added further illumination throughout which added considerably to what I gleaned. What Sun Tzu seems to offer is the codifying of common sense, but that's easy for me to say. He covers all of his bases thoroughly in his opening chapter, outlining categories of consideration and then throwing in a paragraph noting that other considerations may also come into play, every battle is different, etc. Cynically, I feel this makes it easier to take a stand as the ultimate authority: "The general that hearkens to my counsel and acts upon it will conquer."Sun Tzu is silent on the topic of avoiding war altogether (notwithstanding his advice to conquer without combat), as if the first diplomacy he prefers to resort to is raising an army. He also hasn't much to say about keeping an army supplied, only its necessity. His advice is entirely practical, unconcerned with any concept resembling honour, eschewing pride as weakness. The only advice that puzzled me was his recommendation to face the sun; I thought you would want the sun to shine in your enemy's eyes. Everything points to his having been a man of experience, one who knew cost and consequence. I was more impressed as I read further, finding short precise sentences used to convey enormous meaning, and sometimes in multiple ways.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    For my second reading I decided to try the audiobook version read by Aidan Gillen. His dynamics greatly improved my understanding and appreciation for the short work.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Interesting read that applies to different situations in life. I will definitely purchase a hard copy so I can make notes of passages I love and found useful in everyday life and experiences.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I admit to reading this out of curiosity - why did Dr. Melfi recommend Tony Soprano read this and how did he then apply it. Interesting reading but as I already knew, I would make a lousy general.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A wise warrior avoids the battle or something along these lines. The book is no literary wonder written simply as a series of bullet points. What makes it amazing is the fact that it was written before 2500 years & it is still relevant to our modern day. The set of rules outlined can be applied by any leader in any field.
    PS: of course the financial details associated with the armies can be safely discarded.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    “Move not unless you see an advantage, use not your troops unless there is something to be gained, fight not unless the position is critical.”

    I read The Art of War by Sun Tzu through an app called Serial Reader, which breaks up longer books, novellas and short stories into manageable pieces that a reader can read in 12 minutes a day. I love to use Serial Reader when I’m waiting for the bus, in the line at the post office, whenever I feel like I have a few moments, but not necessarily long enough to take out a book and find my place.

    I also really like Serial Reader because I tend to read things I wouldn’t otherwise read, but so far I’ve really enjoyed all the stories and novels that I’ve read.

    I found The Art of War to be surprisingly readable, considering it was written around the 5th century, BCE and has been translated countless times since then. It’s much more philosophical than I had anticipated, and in a way, deeply spiritual.

    Of course it’s dry. It is. It is an ancient military self-help book, none of it is relevant to me. There are lots of lists about the different kinds of ground an army might fight on, different types of weather, how to traverse it all.

    And yet I found it interesting.

    I appreciated that this translator (and, I suppose, author) warned against fighting at all. If you want to occupy a town, best to get the enemy to surrender to you painlessly, so that the town is in tact and nothing is destroyed. Sun Tzu really speaks to the desperation of war, how the last thing anyone wants to do in a war is fight, but if you have to fight, this is what you need to do.

    I’m glad I read this text. I often found myself reading it and wondering about all the people, leaders, warriors, stay-at-home mothers who’d read it before, who were reading it with me. What did they learn from it? How did they feel reading it? Was it more relevant to their lives than it was to mine?

    That, in and of itself, is a fascinating thing to think about, don’t you think?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I have other versions of Sun Tzu's Art of War, and the first one I purchased in Italian was actually a new translation published by the Army publisher, as a Chinese officer part of an exchange programme saw that all the Italian versions at the time were actually... translations of translationsI have also read the Sawyer edition, among others, but I picked up this one in a library as it was the only one I saw so far that, beside the translation, included also a rewriting in ChineseInteresting series of books, as they republished classics from Chinese history following the same approach- so, I was curious to see the differences (on the English side- my abilities in Chinese will be enough to read in Chinese... in few years- in modern Chinese)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Defiantly some good tips in here. I can see why other countries armies are so well disciplined if they still use these tactics. Some of them could also work for dealing with people as well. Some handy things in here.

    It's easy to read, but he repeats things a lot, and some of the sentence are worded strangely. And then, some lines are written like poetry.

    It was a something different, and I'm glad I picked it up.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I'm so glad I finally read this historic book. I found it very interesting and understand why it has been adapted to suit other fields -- notably management. And the version of the book I bought is beautiful in itself. Bound in traditional Chinese style, with each page folded in half and only printed on the outside. Hard to rate -- it is what it is as they say -- but I'm rating it highly because it has stood the test of time.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An enduring classic, an absolute must-read for every business person and military mind the world over.