The Art of War: The Way of the Soldier

In the sixth century BCE, at the end of the Spring and Autumn period, the feudal lords wage war and the rites and music fall into ruin. Tian Shu, a son of a concubine in the state of Qi, joins the army as a boy. After harrowing defeats, fleeing for his life, changing his name, and writing books, he eventually becomes Sun Wu, a peerless master of military strategy. With his thirteen chapters on the art of war, he helps the King of Wu establish hegemony. But in a war capable of destroying humanity, he comes to understand the ultimate secret of warfare: killing is meant to keep people alive.

Sixty years later, the fires of war flare up again in the Warring States period. Sun Bin, Sun Wu's grandson, leaves home with the family military treatise, only to be framed by his fellow disciple Pang Juan and suffer the amputation of his feet and facial tattooing. In the darkest hour of his life, he discovers in his grandfather's manuscripts a moral duty greater than victory or defeat. When the fires of Maling light up the night sky and a thousand crossbows aim at his former senior fellow disciple, he finally understands: true military strategy is not for killing one's enemies, but for ending the tears of all under heaven.

A hundred years later, Shang Yang's reforms are underway. Ying Si, a prince of Qin, happens upon a tattered copy of The Art of War. Amid the blades and shadows of Shang Yang's harsh laws, the old aristocratic families' backlash, and the rival states' alliances, he tries to use the principles of warfare to temper the coldness of Legalism. Yet caught between power and human nature, he faces a choice more perilous than any battlefield.

Three generations of strategists, a century of upheaval. The art of war can conquer cities and territories, but can it safeguard the human heart? Killing can bring all under heaven to heel, but can it feed the people?