•Why it earns a slot
The most-quoted strategy text in business, usually by people who stopped at chapter one. The whole argument is above.
The supreme excellence is winning without fighting. Know yourself and your opponent, prefer positioning and deception to brute force, adapt to the ground you are on, and never fight a long war.
This distillation is written from the freely available original, which is always the better read when you have the time: gutenberg.org.