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Rating: 
Summary: An Amazing Scholarly Piece
Review: As a huge fan of military history, I found this book a fascinating, well written, read. The illustrations (taken from ancient chinese texts) are not florid and are there to enhance the text, the huo-shen (spirit fire) looked extremely deadly.
Rating:
Summary: In-depth and exhaustively researched
Review: This is everything you've ever wanted to know about how fire and water (mostly fire) was used in warfare in ancient China. How much could be said about it? Oh man... a lot. The level of detail in this book is astounding. Culling information from seemingly hundreds of ancient Chinese texts, Sawyer (who is best known for his best-selling translation of Sun-Tzu's Art of War) gives an in-depth play-by-play account of thousands of years of tribal battles. The stories behind the creative implementations of the elements themselves are fascinating; even in this age of hi-tech gizmo warfare, there are new tricks I've learned from this book-and they were done thousands of years ago! But the actual historical background is scholarly and detailed to the point of academic overload, and it could probably only be followed (let alone remembered) by the most passionate of Sinophiles.
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