Sun Tzu Was a Sissy: Conquer Your Enemies, Promote Your Friends, and Wage the Real Art of War

by Stanley Bing

Book Overview

We live in a vicious, highly competitive workplace environment, and things aren't getting any better. Jobs are few and far between, and people aren't any nicer now than they were when Ghengis Khan ran... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060734787
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Harper Business
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.1" x 0.5" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

Corporate Politics is War!

This book is very enlightening and cool. Stanley Bing says it like it is. If you wait long enough your enemies will float down river!

Great Book "Egotistical Company Men" beware! and prepare to die....

The book is a fantastick wisdom filled humor lovers read and reminds you in colorful language from cover to cover how to really deal with the daily suferings of fools and foes alike. **Important note: AFTER READING THE NEGATIVE REVIEWS OF THIS BOOK HERE, I FOUND THAT THESE ARE THE KINDS OF PEOPLE YOU WANT TO AVOID WORKING FOR OR WITH, AND NO WONDER THEY HATE BING AND THE BOOK, HE KIND OF SHINES A LIGHT ON THEM ANDHOW TO GET RID OF THEM. So, If you see a title for review like "insulting" or "Bing doesn't respect SUN TSU", buy the book and learn how to obliterate effete snobs like these from the workplace where you work. Your company will thank you for it, and probably get you the new position you've only dreamt about.

Make War, not Love

I'm going to Eat your Lunch! That's right, you read that right, you pathetic little cubicle-dwelling toad: I'm going to each your lunch, I'm going to shove you face first into the garbage can (not the environmentally friendly recycling bin, you pathetic slug) for good measure, and I'm going to do that every single day. Why? Because let's face it: Business is War. Most people---people like you, probably, but not me---work for the weekends. They gather around the water cooler like a pack of Wildebeest, eyes wildly alert to sign of the corporate predator advancing on the watering hole, nostrils flared for the scent of high-end perfume that marks the advance of the Big Boss, or at least one of his Nastier Henchmen. They whine. They bleat. They make comforting snuffles to each other about the unfairness of the Working World, and maybe even groom each other's fur for lice and ticks. Not a Corporate Warrior, steeped in the wisdom of the Ancient Buddhist Warrior Master, Sun Tzu. Or rather---in Stanley Bing's cut-to-the-viscera of the matter take on Sun Tzu. Bing claims the guy was a Sissy. Wow! Ballsy call, Bing! But Sun Tzu? High-octane corporate consultant to lotsa M & A and hostile takeovers between the Kingdoms of Dung, Wung, Ching, Chang and Tofu? Master and warrior-poet who gave the world the Art of War, which, for chrissakes, was quoted once by Gordon Gekko? How now, Bing? Because: 1) Sun Tzu wore a dress. Bing's got photographic evidence. And anyway 2) Sun Tzu thoght that the very heigh of martial prowess was being able to win a battle without having to fight. Pansy! Anyway, Bing's little exegesis is geared to help you draw on that well of fear, ignorance, anger, and lust for total power and wealth: to tap into it, to crave the heady glory of face-to-face combat, to face your cringing opponent across the gleaming board room table, rip the french-cuffed sleeves off your arms, wrap your tie around your head, and do battle! Win! Kill! Kill! Kill! Will "Sun Tzu was a Sissy"---with its fulminations against Win-Win Wimpery, its piratical insistence on booty and gutting the Enemy like a sick dog, its sage advice on dealing with Enemies---the fat enemy, the thin enemy, the enemy with a Napoleon complex---its liberal advocacy of poison as a means for achieving business coups (booze, baby, booze---or if you have one of those super-secret Borgia rings...)---teach you how to become an ass-kicking business warrior? Nah. That stuff you have to be born with, anyway, and self-help books don't work for you, right, champ? Will you have a few rowdy little laughs? Absolutely. And if you're a wolf of the business world, will it serve as a juicy ego-massage and atta-boy, which you will read, laugh, and then have a juicy helping of afternoon firings, after which you can retire, with some fellow predators, to the comfort of the Executive Suite where you can all shed your skins and share a few war stories? Absolutely: because War is not only

Love it or hate it

If you're expecting business strategy or something thought provoking, you will find it here, but don't expect it to be presented in any serious context. The book is full of puns and dark humor that not everyone will appreciate. The book is extremely easy to read cover to cover if you have the time. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and put it on my book shelf right next to the original art of war by Sun Tzu.

Should have been titled "Sun Tzu Was A Tzissy"

This book is very funny, although as I read it, I was not always able to gauge when the author was trying to make a serious point. Therefore, I read it as if it was a satire throughout and completed it in a day. Sun Tzu was a Chinese general who lived sometime around 500 BC and his classic text, "The Art of War", is still used to train military leaders. However, it is as much a text of philosophy as it is of battlefield tactics, so many have adapted his principles to other facets of life. Bing uses the business world as his backdrop, placing everything into a military context. Of course it is all a joke, there are chapters on the adversarial qualities of short people, tall people, fat people and skinny people. All in good clean fun, although like all humor, someone somewhere will take offence. Puns are scattered throughout, many based on using the "tz" prefix as a substitute for an "s". For example, on page 150, there is the sentence: "If the enemy is unprepared, you may reveal yourself and attack, Tzays Tzu, and there is a good possibility of Tzuccess. If, . . . engagement without success immediately renders battle Tzummarily impossible . . " I wonder why the title of the book wasn't, "Sun Tzu Was a Tzissy." My favorite pun is on page 145. Shih is an ancient Chinese philosophical notion defined as, "shih was the elegance of knowledge, the insight and skill to organize knowledge into meaningful patterns." Bing explains what shih is, relates it to the modern business world and then has the classic line, "Face it. You're full of shih." I roared with laughter at that one. If you want some serious fun to be poked at modern business methods with an occasional jab by a sharpened prod straight to your pompous essentials, then this is the book for you. It may not help your business, but it is guaranteed to help your disposition.