cao cao#1 wrote:hi
i am looking for some good books on chinese history(preferably on the later han and three kingdoms) and chinese strategy.
so far i got the sun tzu the art of war, mastering the art of war by zhuge liang,and The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China.
could anyone recommend some other good titles please?
Dr. Sawyer (likely the same one who translated your copy of the
Seven Military Classics) also has a book entitled
One Hundred Unorthodox Strategies. Compiled in the Ming Dynasty, it contains a sort of "best of" the military classics along with specific case studies, several of them featuring the Han and Three Kingdoms eras. One detail up front: the names are in the Wade-Giles romanization rather than in Pinyin, as in all of Sawyer's translations. The ISBN for the paperback edition is 0-8133-2860-8.
Sawyer also has a good translation of Sun Bin (or Sun Pin) entitled
Military Methods of the Art of War. This is another Warring States work. The ISBN for the hardback edition (although a paperback one was also printed) is 1-5866-3608-1. Again, this one is in Wade-Giles.
Finally, I cannot recommend enough Knoblock and Riegel's translation of the
Lushi chunqiu entitled
The Annals of Lu Buwei. This is primarily a Qin Dynasty work that focuses on the Spring & Autumn period and is a wonderful source of knowledge for those who want to understand references to legendary and historical characters to whom the characters in
Three Kingdoms make reference. The ISBN for the hardback edition from Stanford UP is 0-8047-3354-6. This one is Pinyin!