The contemporary companion to Sun-tzu’s The Art of War, this brilliant distillation of the strategies of war can help us gain mastery in the modern world.< Spanning world civilizations, synthesizing dozens of political, philosophical, and religious texts and thousands of years of violent conflict, this is a comprehensive guide to getting ahead and staying there. Each chapter outlines an approach that will help you win your life's wars. Learn the offensive strategies that require you to maintain the initiative and negotiate from a position of strength, and the defensive strategies that enable you to respond to dangerous situations and avoid situations where winning is impossible.< As in The 48 Laws of Power, Robert Greene uses illustrative examples from history: Lyndon Johnson's tenacity, Julius Caesar's decisiveness, Joan Crawford's refusal to compromise, Ted Williams's competitive drive, and the folly and genius of everyone from Napoleon to Margaret Thatcher, Shaka the Zulu to Ulysses S. Grant. Great warriors of the battlefield and the drawing room demonstrate prudence, agility, balance, and calm. The rational, resourceful, and intuitive always defeat the panicked, uncreative, and stupid. Informed by the most ingenious and effective military principles in war, The 33 Strategies provides all the psychological ammunition you need to overcome patterns of failure and forever gain the upper hand.

Cunning, instructive, and amoral, this controversial bestseller distills 3,000 years of the history of power into 48 well-explicated laws. Law 1: Never Outshine the Master. Law 3: Conceal Your Intentions. Law 7: Get Others to Do the Work for You, but Always Take the Credit. Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally. Law 33: Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew. These are the laws of power in their unvarnished essence-the philosophies of Machiavelli (The Prince), Sun-tzu (The Art of War), Carl von Clausewitz, Talleyrand, the great seducer Casanova, con man Yellow Kid Weil, and other legendary thinkers and schemers. They teach prudence, stealth, mastery of one’s emotions, the art of deception, and the total absence of mercy. Like it or not, all have practical applications in real life. Each law is illustrated with examples of observance or transgression drawn from history and featuring such famous figures as Queen Elizabeth I, Henry Kissinger, Mao, Alfred Hitchcock, P.T. Barnum, Haile Selassie, Catherine the Great, and Socrates. Convincing, practical, sometimes shocking, this book will fascinate anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control.