The flaws with Sun Tzu are its stating the bleeding obviousness and tautology. Apparently you should avoid attacking well fortified positions for instance. Then again, the WWI generals seemed to miss that bit. They cleary never read Tzu's views on facile ground.

Tautologically, you should never fight a battle unless you're sure you're going to win it before you start. Well, who can be sure even with good advice. I bet Napoleon thought he'd win Waterloo.

Best of all though, next time I'm on a business course and the tutor starts quoting Sun Tzu, I'll have a good idea whether the tutor is bluffing or not.

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Sun Shuyun provides the perfect introduction to modern Communist China by investigating it's founding myth - The Long March. A descent into the wilderness of China by a beaten Red Army, which makes Moses flight from Egypt look tame by comparison. However long the distances, harsh the weather, the terrain, the enemy attacks, the Communist purges that you can imagine, this book reveals them to be more so.

Not that this is haigography. Sun's great skill is in presenting the story of the Long March as she knew it from school and the Chinese media and weaving in both her personal journey along the route and the reminiscences of all classes of those who participated in the March. We learn the myth, the reality and how arduous the journey still is today. We loose count of the times Sun mentions in passing journeys of 10 hours or more, which would be enough for most people.

Even Moscow's role is revealed. A most destructive one at that. You can see how their policies didn't fit with Chinese realities, their military advisors all but annihilated the Red Army and they backed the wrong people such as Chiang. You can see where the Sino-Soviet antipathy came from.

My only criticism is that the book isn't longer. It seems to end abruptly and I'm hoping this leaves room for a sequel.

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You can't help thinking there is something naieve about providing your enemies with a book outlining your methods and thinking they won't outwit you. There is also the possibility that someone was using Che, someone less scrupulous perhaps.

The manual is also let down by contradicting itself, such as allowing relationships and later not. Also by its sexism, Che tries not be sexist but still thinks women make better cooks as that is part of 'their traditional role'.

The emphasis on revolutionary indoctrination is also terribly dated. Hopefully people don't still believe that you have to take on a convoluted, contradictory pseudo-Marxist-Leninist rationale for what may be a perfectly straightforward insurrection against the corrupt. Ideology all too often just gets in the way of simpler explanations and twists original good intentions into more sinister things.

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Seeing the sex, sleaze and gossip of Old Hollywood from this fresh angle is delightful. Cheetah is the Candide of Hollywood, a favourite moment being when he finds the doorhandle more interesting than the lesbian encounter he's stumbled in on. Well, which would be more unusual to a chimp?

So sad that his career was over at 14, that former Olympic medalist Wiesmuller died of cancer, swindled of his earnings and that the whole book might be a hoax and that this may not be Cheeta after all.

Still very worthwhile though for the points made about the use of animals in the entertainment industry and the wider society - ironically presented by a chimp disagreeing with them. I expect that an appeal for more humane treatment of animals was the author's motivation for writing.

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The prose is lightweight and the content sparse, which can't all be put down to it being a translation (possibly one which loses a verve present in the original). Much of the book is taken up with Salazar himself and comparisons which only mean something to a French readership. Indeed, it maybe should have been called "Paralell Lives".

Also, there is the question of why is there a need for this book? Apparently he has been honoured around the world and books have been written about him. If this were the 60s or even as late as the 80s, in his native Portugal, there would be a reason for a campaigning treatise. This seems a bit late in the day, lacking focus and the Ladybird version. None of which detracts from De Sousa Mendes deserving to be spoken of in company of Oscar Schindler.

Link to this post: http://www.cogitas.net/bookworm/search.php?p=3