Sun Tzu: The Art of War

Bibliography:

Griffith, Samuel B.. “Sun Tzu: The Art of War.” Oxford University Press. New York. 1963.

Review: I have many versions or translations of Sun Tzu’s Art of War but this one escaped my notice until now. I was studying Colonel Boyd’s works when his reading list came up in the thesis written by Frans Osinga, a most excellent paper - the best written on the Colonel. He stated that Colonel Boyd found Mr. Griffith’s version to be the best written, most comprehensive and insightful translation of Sun Tzu to date. It is this reason I found a hard cover copy and am not studying it along with Clausewitz and Machiavelli - to name just two others.

I have barely gone past the introduction and find his writings to be clear, concise and inspiring. I have already begun taking notes in my work to analyze the art of war then to synthesize it into a form plausible and relevant to karate, martial arts and self-protective disciplines like self-defense. 

Well into the fourth chapter, easy to understand, easily explained and relevant to every day life strategies let alone those for karate, martial arts and protection disciplines - even toward the product from Colonel Boyd, USAF and his patterns of conflict, the Boyd Cycle or the OODA loop. :-)

The Mind of War

Bibliography:

Hammond, Grant. “The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security.” Smithsonian Books, New York. 2004.

Review: Let this be the next read in your library toward a fuller, better and more concise study of Boyd’s Cycle (the OODA Loop). Mr. Hammond fills in a lot of gaps in other efforts, not intentional but more depth toward understanding the man and how he came to create his strategic art of war or what he called, “Patterns of Conflict.” 

My Karate and Martial Arts aficionado’s will wonder what this has to do with karate and martial arts and self-defense and, “Competitions,” and I can say, “plenty.” Take the authors I often promote for study, Marc MacYoung and Rory Miller, whose works convey many valuable aspects of the OODA for self-defense and the professional disciplines like Police and Military. 

Yes, it started about fighter pilots in combat but it grew into this thing tantamount to the works of Sun Tzu, Machiavelli and Clausewitz. I am discovering more by this study and connecting karate and martial arts for self-defense to the OODA, etc. I find this not just amazingly interesting but a valuable data study of how we can better utilize our studies, practices and training of karate, martial arts and self-defense. It should be its own principle in the fundamental principles of defense methodologies, etc. Yeah!