This book is fantastic. The quality is superb. The cover of the book is almost like a thread-like material with a reflective sheen to it. The book just screams for attention if it's just lying around, it would always catch the eyes of my guests as I had it laying about the house during my reading of it. It has now since been put away in the bookshelves, but even still, if there's any amount of light it will make the spine glow as well. The gold inlay is also very striking and also reflects a lot of light.The paper stock is very high quality as well. With thick glossy pages, a nice easy to read bold font, and a built in thin black satin or nylon bookmark strap. (I'm not sure of the actual material of the little bookmark strap, but it should give a visual.)The book itself is a very fast read. I like all of the annotations from the other readers of the work, generals, and philosophers. I also like the history lesson preceding the actual part of the book "The Art of War".I have never read any other versions or translations of this book, but I do think that this is a fine place to start.I think most people looking at this book probably know the general idea of what is contained inside, but it is a book about the strategies and philosophies of war. Much can be extracted and applied to life situations today, even if you are not involved in a war. There is a reason that the book remains so timeless and popular.I also recommend reading this book if you are into real time strategy games, such as Starcraft or Starcraft II, as this will improve your game. In a situation like this then the book literally applies to what you are doing, which is waging war on your opponent with an army.