Saturday, January 28, 2017

350-359: Mainly Military History and the Art of War

The whole point of this project was to read nonfiction in areas outside my natural interests, so I should have been happy when I got to the 350's. Definitely never read anything from this section before. Definitely never expect to again. So I kind of skated by, choosing a book that can be read out loud in a couple of hours, and at least I can now say I have read one book about military strategy.

Indeed, to hear some tell it, the ONLY book about military strategy. Or about strategy in any kind of adversarial situation. Forbes loves it--a lot. After all, as Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank says,  "My attitude is business is war. You send out your soldiers every day in the form of your capital, and you want them to come home with prisoners. You want to salt the earth that your competitor is lurking on. You want to steal their market share. You want to destroy them and get their customers." Lifehacker.com loves it-- the enemy is that bad habit you are trying to break. Jessica Hagy turned it into charts (Forbes again!), seemingly applying every paragraph to a different peacetime challenge. My late pastor loved it, applying it to spiritual warfare against the world, the flesh and the devil. Even librarians love it! 

Well. I'm sorry, but for me it's simply a book about military strategy, specifically about how to overrun some other guy's territory and force him out of it, and I think this kind of thing:
Jessica Hagy for Forbes.com
is a stretch. But if you want to read this book devotionally, meditating on all the possible applications of each phrase to your daily life, knock yourself out. You'll be in good company.