Sun Tzu redux

Nylan's translation of The Art of War, however, is marvellously pointy and plainspoken. Each sentence is a struck match

The most electric war plan in semi-recent American literature appears in “A Run Through the Jungle,” a story by the much-missed Thom Jones. Here is that plan in its entirety: “Infiltrate Hanoi, grab Uncle Ho by the goatee, pull off his face and make a clean escape.” Because warfare is rarely so simple, books of strategy are consulted.

The most venerable of these, alongside On War (1832), by the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, is Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, written some 2,500 years ago. There have been many translations of  The Art of War,  and a new one, by