Scott Boorman Published New Book

Department News
April 1, 2024

Professor Scott Boorman published a new book Three Faces of Sun Tzu.  Sun Tzu’s Art of War is widely regarded as the most influential military and strategic classic of all time.  Through ‘reverse engineering’ of the text structered around 14 Sun Tzu ‘themes,’ this rigorous analysis furnishes a thorough picture of what the text actually says, drawing on Chinese-language analyses, historical, philogical, and archaeological sources, traditional commentaries, computational ideas, and stategic and logistics perspectives.  Building on this anchoring, the book provides a unique roadmap of Sun Tzu’s military and intelligence insights and their applications to strategic competitions in many times and places worldwide, from Warring States China to contemporary US/China strategic competition and other 21st century competitions involving cyber warfare, computing, other hi-tech conflict, espionage, and more.  Simultaneously, the analysis offers a window into Sun Tzu’s limitations and blind spots relevant to managing 21st century strategic competitions with Sun-Tzu-inspired adversaries or rivals.