The Art of War examinations. During the Sengoku period (c. 1467–1568), the Japanese "daimyō" named Takeda Shingen (1521–1573) is said to have become almost invincible in all battles without relying on guns, because he studied "The Art of War". The book even gave him the inspiration for his famous battle standard "Fūrinkazan" (Wind, Forest, Fire and Mountain), meaning fast as the wind, silent as a forest, ferocious as fire and immovable as a mountain. The translator Samuel B. Griffith offers a chapter on "Sun Tzu and Mao Tse-Tung" where "The Art of War" is cited as influencing Mao's "On Guerrilla Warfare", "On the Protracted
If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice to the Young In 2016, Seven Stories Press released what it called a "(much) expanded second edition" of the book. If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice to the Young If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice to the Young (Seven Stories Press) is a 2013 collection of nine commencement speeches from Kurt Vonnegut, selected and introduced by Dan Wakefield. After the publication of his novel "Slaughterhouse-Five" brought him worldwide acclaim in 1969, Kurt Vonnegut became one of America's most popular graduation speakers. There were years when public speaking was Vonnegut's main source of income. "We are performing animals," he used to say