Sun Tzu's book on battlefield strategy, "The Art of War", has been required reading for the thoughtful military officer for more than 2,500 years. Today, though, among, the books biggest fans are American business people, many of whom regard it as an essential guide to business strategy. It's no accident that Donald J Trump himself echoed the book's title in his own work, The Art of the Deal.

We talked to John McWhorter, a linguistics professor at Columbia University and podcast host at Lexicon Valley, about the book. He gave us his take on the utility of using the language of warfighting when doing business, and thinking about the boardroom as a battlefield.

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