The Art of War isn’t just for generals. Two thousand five hundred years after Sun Tzu composed his maxims on strategy, The Art of War is being applied to conflict zones in the conference room, at board meetings, in the boss’ office and around the water cooler. “The victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory,” is one example of the sage’s wise counsel. In plain English, don’t pick fights unless you know you can win.
Seattle-based cartoonist Jessica Hagy’s The Art of War Visualized provides the key texts with captioned circle and arrow drawings—the sort of things one might draw on the whiteboard of your office conference room to make a point. The rotating arrows of the page entitled INTENSE STUDY STRATEGIZING, indicating that the one thing leads to another, don’t make a full account of Sun’s maxim that by concealing tactics “you will be safe from the prying of the subtlest spies, from the machinations of the wisest brains,” but appears intended as a jumping-off point—a PowerPoint, if you will, on a self-help guide through the eternally apt reflections of a philosopher-general whose goal was victory. “Know your enemy”? She might be in the next cubicle.
Jessica Hagy will discuss The Art of War Visualized at 7 p.m. on Monday, April 27, at Boswell Book Co.
