This is a very popular book and comes highly recommended from many places. Sadly, I was unimpressed. Perhaps this particular translation is bad. I haven't read others do I can't comment on that aspect. However, this particular copy was not worth the read.

So many people have recommended this book, and talk up its application to other areas of life outside of war (e.g. business). I figured it was time to see what the hype was about, so I gave the Librivox audio version a try.

I'm having a very hard time understanding who this book might be relevant to today. Many many years ago, war was a very different affair: soldiers lined up in ranks, marched at each other with the general in front, and that was the battle. These 'rules' were kind of mutually agreed upon and traditionally the way war was fought, so when Sun Tzu brought out his knowledge that there was a far more strategic way to do things it was no doubt a big big deal. Certainly whoever he was advising at the time would stand a far better chance when some of these then-novel ideas were passed into practice, as the author seems to have a grasp on basic military theory.

Nowadays of course we have all seen the evolution of war in a thousand years of refinement, so nearly everything about this is either common sense or purely outdated. The problem with this book is that it dances the line between theory and practice too much, and so it repeatedly presents a singular view with a few abstracted examples, never managing to be concisely profound nor applicable. Here, I'll summarize The Art of War for you in one line:
"Look for weaknesses in your enemy and exploit them, but carefully ensure that your enemy cannot do the same to you."
There, I just saved you a book full of epithets and variations on the theme. These double-statements continually take a form like this:
"If you do X (seek the higher ground, scout the terrain, attack your enemy's supply line, etc), you can defeat your enemies. But if you instead do X (take to the lower ground, ignore your surroundings, fail to defend your own supply line), your enemies will defeat you."
Very frustrating and repetitive. Confounding things even more is that they are arranged in no particular order. Somebody with a poor understanding of layout has grouped these into various 'chapters' with headings, but the chapter heading only applies for about 10 lines or so, and then the focus completely changes to some other aspect of ancient warfare.

From a historical perspective, it's undoubtedly important. Without a historical context, it's a pretty useless book. Those looking for a practical study of war would do well to look elsewhere. And those who are looking for a philosophical approach would be better served by introspection and study than trying to bend these little statements to their own needs. About the best thing I can say about it is that it does lend itself well to being quoted from, but that is hardly worth reading it for.