In medieval warfare, such seemingly elementary conventions as army organization, staff services, hierarchy of command, and codes of military law were nonexistent. Niccolo Machiavelli changed all that. Among other improvements, he instituted the systemic concept of troop formation and proclaimed discipline to be of supreme importance. War was war, he believed, and victory the primary aim to which all other considerations must be subordinated. Though a republican at heart, he say as the crying need of his day a strong political and military leader who could forge a unitary state in northern Italy to eliminate forces from Italian soil.

The Art of War, like its fellow Machiavellian treatise The Prince, has been highly esteemed for nearly five centuries and widely read by such leaders as Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Saint-Cyr, and Clausewitz. It outlines most of the fundamental issues that theorists of war continue to examine today, making it essential reading for any student of military history, strategy or theory.

The authoritative Ellis Farneworth translation, with an introduction by Neal Wood.