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 Military Strategy Classics of Ancient China Military Strategy Classics of Ancient China presents modern translations of eight of the most important and relevant military texts from antiquity, which have gained new prominence among Western students of Eastern military strategy and philosophy. Each text in Chen Song’s groundbreaking translation is presented in modern English, followed by Chinese characters. These texts provide background for a wide range of disciplines, including: history, linguistics, wuxia, martial arts, and trial strategy.
Contents include:
The Six Secret Teachings – Jiang Ziya
The Art of War – Sun Tzu
Methods of War – Sima Rangju
The Book of Wuzi – Wu Qi
The Book of Wei Liaozi – Wei Liao
The Three Strategies of Huang Shigong
The Thirty Six Stratagems
Questions and Replies: Tang Taizong and Li Jing
 Special Edition Books has recently signed agreements to make available our entire catalog of books on Google Play in the following countries: United States, Canada, Great Britain, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, India, Australia, Italy, France, Russia, Spain and Germany.
Titles will be available internationally on 11/20/2012.
eBooks with illustrations in our catalog include The Illustrated Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, The Samurai Series, and The Gladys Malvern Collection.
Reading List books include: The Overcoat & Selected Stories, Lady Chatterley’s Lover – Restored Modern Edition, Glittering Things: Flappers, Fantasies & Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The Art of War by Sun Tzu – Classic Edition.
eBooks available through Google Play are downloadable to PCs, laptops and on all Android devices.
 The Art of War by Sun Tzu - Classic Edition The Warring States Period 475-221 BCE is a history of constant warfare, of alliances and counter-alliances, and of treaties made and broken. The nature of warfare evolved during the period. During the Warring States period, political stability was impossible to gain by adventurous military action. With the advent of swelling ranks of soldiers, protracted sieges, and an ever increasing drain on state treasuries, warfare became a serious matter for study.
Thus, the opening remark of “The Art Of War” states–without exaggeration–war had become the most serious business of the state, the key to survival or ruin. The author of this and other pithy aphorisms on how to successfully fight a war was Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu scholars place his writing “The Art of War” in the Warring States Period, based on the descriptions of warfare in the text. The book has received great exposure in the west starting in the eighteenth century after being translated by a French missionary. It has been reported that Napoleon studied the text and effectively put many of its teachings to good use. For the past 2,000 years, it has been the most important military treatise in all of Asia, even known by name with the common people. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese military figures have studied it and employed its concepts to good effect. This is especially evident in the military tactics of 20th century revolutionaries like Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh.
Continue reading The Warring States Period in China; Sun Tzu’s The Art of War
 The Teachings of Confucius - Special Edition Confucius not only said interesting things, he sang them and accompanied himself on a kind of zither. The Smithsonian Institution’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery displays an exhibit of musical instruments from Confucius’ time, 2,500 years ago. A collection of his lyrics – unfortunately there are no melodies – is one of the first pieces of Chinese literature handed down through the centuries.
“It is said that Confucius accompanied himself on a ‘qin’ while singing the odes of the Shi Jing, or the ‘Classic of Poetry,’” says cellist Yo-Yo Ma in a guide to the exhibit. “We don’t know what Confucius’ qin may have looked like, but in popular accounts of his life, the image of the philosopher-musician became firmly established.” The qin is a kind of zither. Today’s Chinese musicians still use one kind. Ma is an American of Chinese ancestry, one of today’s leading cellists playing classical western music.
Jenny F. So, the Sackler’s curator of ancient Chinese art, said in an interview that some of the “odes” were just folk songs. Confucius reportedly made a practice of dancing with his disciples every day. In his time, music was considered of great social significance, linking rulers to subjects, parents to children. “It is by poetry that one’s mind is aroused; it is by ceremony that one’s character is regulated; it is by music that one becomes accomplished,” he said.
Most of the instruments on display come from a tomb of the Marquis Yi, found by Chinese soldiers in 1977 when they were leveling a hill as a site for a factory. The instruments are borrowed from a museum in Hubei, China. So said this is the first time they have been displayed in a musical context.
Continue reading Confucius not only said interesting things, he played them.
 Experiment short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald Once considered a writer of “slick” magazine stories intended for mass consumption, F. Scott Fitzgerald is now regarded as one of the finest literary craftsmen of his, or of any other, generation. Entrenched in the milieu of the reckless 1920’s, his stories reflect the carefree, impetuous attitude of the time, but they also go far beyond providing a mere snapshot of a generation. Fitzgerald established himself as a master at entwining romanticism with realism. He dissected class differences with a surgeon’s precision. He exalted the Jazz Age fantasy of glorious excess even as he tore it apart.
Glittering Things: The Complete Tales of the Jazz Age contains a solid compendium of early works by Fitzgerald—a time when he was at his most experimental in terms of themes and techniques, as well as a time when he was at his most influential with the public. Included in this special edition is the novelette “Winter Dreams,” a story that would eventually become his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. Also included are “May Day” and “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” two of the most well-regarded pieces in the Fitzgerald canon, offering the writer’s candid analysis of the darker side of the Jazz Age’s quest for excess. Fitzgerald’s trademark wit and mastery of dialogue are also well represented with the stories “The Camel’s Back,” “Porcelain and Pink,” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
Continue reading Glittering Things: Flappers, Fantasies, Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Experimental short fiction at its best.
 The Art of War by Sun Tzu - Classic Collector's Edition A veteran of aerial combat in the Korean War could help America’s ground-pounders vanquish terrorists in the Middle East today. From his experience dueling with Soviet MiGs, Air Force Colonel John Boyd derived a way of thinking about strategy that applied not only to dogfighting over the Korean Peninsula, but to all dimensions of conflict and competition.
Boyd’s theory was deceptively simple: The combatant who was best able to adapt to an environment that was perpetually in flux, and thus to keep his opponent off-balance, would enjoy a nearly insuperable edge in battle.
Intuition started Boyd on his improbable journey from fighter pilot to strategic theorist. After Korea he landed an assignment as a flight instructor at the Air Force’s elite Fighter Weapons School. There he earned the nickname “40-Second Boyd” after issuing a standing $40 bet that he could win any dogfight within 40 seconds after starting from a position of disadvantage.
He won every encounter – and became obsessed with figuring out how, in theoretical terms, he had pulled it off. Continue reading Col John Boyd: Use Sun Tzu to out maneuver,defeat terrorists
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