I went to Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, took Chinese (Mandarin). That was in 1968. I was stationed throughout the Far East while in the Navy. After getting out, I got an MA in Oriental Studies, with a concentration in modern Chinese history. During that time, I studied Chinese at National Taiwan University, again concentrating in modern Chinese history and language. Following that I was a China analyst in the Intelligence Community and in the Navy Reserves, and served briefly as a deputy Naval liaison officer in Hong Kong. My interest in China is long and personal. Over the past several years, I’ve kind of drifted away from it, but I visited the International Spy Museum the other day and saw your book. I very much like the side by side format, with the literal translation across from the more polished English. In addition, my younger son is a martial arts instructor in the Marine Corps and the head of the Marines’ Martial Arts Center of Excellence, LtCol Joseph Shusko, USMC (ret), refers to The Art of War a lot. Having had my scholastic head in modern China, I never really read the original Chinese version, and only referred to it now and again whenever Mao’s Chinese Revolution came up or I had a need to refer to Mao’s tactics in the countryside prior to 1949. When I saw the book the other day, I just had to pick it up. I’ve been reading it nightly – the Chinese and the English – and it has renewed my interest in studying Chinese again. (My classical Chinese is woefully inadequate, however, and I need to dig out some of my reference books from grad school, especially the ones dealing with “Xu Zi,” those pesky punctuation characters).