I don't know how many books there are on strategy, but there must be thousands. There are books that will tell you the latest fad in business strategy and strategic planning. There are textbooks on strategy written for students in graduate management programs.
There are innumerable memoirs, and books purporting to connect military strategy to business strategy. There are books about strategy that are actually historical studies of one kind or another. There are great philosophical tomes like Von Clausewitz's masterpiece On War. But there are very few books that are short, well written, and filled with enough wisdom that you keep going back to them. Two of those books are Sun Tzu's classic The Art of War and Warfighting: The U. S. Marine Corps Book of Strategy.
Both are very short. Both are packed with wisdom that you can apply in a variety of situations. Of the two, though, I'd pick Warfighting as the book you "must have" if you're going to make sense of strategy.
Warfighting is basically a publication of the U. S. Marine Corps doctrine, penned by then Commandant of the Marine Corps, Al Gray, and distributed to all Marine officers in 1989. It's extremely well written and develops in a logical progression, yet it's still a book that you can dip into for a nugget of wisdom here and there.
Warfighting is a book that's easy to adapt, whether you're studying ancient military campaigns or thinking about business strategy. It's also a book written by a modern Westerner and, therefore, in a more straightforward and less elliptical style than the Sun Tzu classic. Both books are good. I have both and I go back to them often, but my choice amongst them is Warfighting.
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Created/Revised/Reviewed: 24 August 2002
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