Long acknowledged as a classic text on strategy, Sun Tzu's The Art of War has been admired by leaders as diverse as Mao Zedong and General Norman Schwartzkopf. However, having been written two thousand years ago, the book can be somewhat daunting to the modern reader.

Mark McNeilly, author of Sun Tzu and the Art of Business (OUP, 2011), which made Sun Tzu accessible to the business executive, has extracted the six concepts most applicable to modern warfare, making them easy to understand and apply to military situations. Drawing on a wealth of fascinating historical...