Gagliardi, Gary J. 1951–

PERSONAL: Born February 16, 1951, in Fairbanks, AL; married December 10, 1983; wife's name Rebecca Anne; children: Amanda. Education: Attended Santa Clara University and Harvard Graduate School of Business. Hobbies and other interests: Languages, travel, golf, public speaking.

ADDRESSES: Home—19542 Wallkingford Ave. N., Shoreline, WA 98133. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Clearbridge Publishing, P.O. Box 33772, Seattle, WA 98133; fax: 206-546-9756. E-mail—gary@clearbridge.com.

CAREER: Businessperson, lecturer, and writer. Bic Pen, Milford, CT, sales manager, 1977–80; Tandy Corp. (now Tandy/Radio Shack), Fort Worth, TX, national accounts marketing manager, 1980–83; Four-Gen Software, Seattle, WA, president and chair of the board, 1983–96. Work-related activities include Junior Achievement.

MEMBER: Harvard Business School Alumni Club.

AWARDS, HONORS: Blue Chip Quality Award, Ernst & Young, 1992, for Quality Systems; Trendsetter Award for innovation, Cooper's & Lybrand, 1993; Independent Publishers Award for Best Multicultural Nonfiction Book, 2003, for The Art of War; plus the Ancient Chinese Revealed; Ben Franklin Award, 2004, for The Art of War; plus the Art of Marketing.

WRITINGS:

How to Make Your Small Computer Pay Off: What the First-Time Business System Buyer Must Know, Lifetime Learning Publications (Belmont, CA), 1983.

FourGen Software—1989 Fast and Friendly Computer Guides (Home Computers, Office Computers, and Personal Computers), Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1984.

Client/Server Computing: Killing the Mainframe Dinosaur and Slashing Runaway MIS Costs, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1994.

(With Stephen Holt and Mark Fuerst) The Shark Cartilage Alternative: For Bone and Joint Health, Keats (New Canaan, CT), 1997.

(Translator and author of foreword) The Art of War: In Sun Tzu's Own Words, Clearbridge (Shoreline, WA), 1999.

The Art of War: Sun Tzu's Classic in Plain English, Clearbridge (Shoreline, WA), 1999.

"THE ART OF WAR PLUS" SERIES

(With Sun Tzu) The Art of War; plus the Art of Sales, Clearbridge (Shoreline, WA), 1999, published as Sun Tzu's the Art of War; plus the Art of Sales, 2003.

(With Sun Tzu) The Art of War; plus the Art of Management, Clearbridge (Shoreline, WA), 2000.

(With Sun Tzu) The Art of War; plus the Art of Marketing, Clearbridge (Shoreline, WA), 2000.

(With Sun Tzu) The Art of War; plus the Warrior Class: 306 Lessons in Modern Competition, Clearbridge (Seattle, WA), 2001, second edition published as Sun Tzu's the Art of War; plus the Warrior Class: 306 Lessons in Strategy, 2003.

(With Sun Tzu) Amazing Secrets of Sun Tzu's the Art of War, Clearbridge (Seattle, WA), 2001, published as Sun Tzu's the Art of War; plus, Its Amazing Secrets, 2003.

(With Sun Tzu) The Art of War; plus the Art of Starting a Business, Clearbridge (Seattle, WA), 2002.

The Art of War; plus the Art of Career Building, Clearbridge (Seattle, WA), 2002.

(With Sun Tzu) The Art of War; plus the Art of Parenting Teens, Clearbridge (Seattle, WA), 2002.

Sun Tzu's The Art of War; plus the Art of Love: The Ancient Chinese Science of Strategy, Bing-Fa, for Finding, Winning, and Keeping Lifelong Love, Clearbridge (Seattle, WA), 2002.

(Translator and author of foreword) The Art of War; plus the Ancient Chinese Revealed, Clearbridge (Seattle, WA), 2002.

(With Sun Tzu) Sun Tzu's The Art of War; plus the Art of Small Business, Clearbridge (Seattle, WA), 2003.

(With Sun Tzu) Strategy against Terror: Sun Tzu's Art of War Plus, Clearbridge (Seattle, WA), 2004.

(With Sun Tzu) Sun Tzu's The Art of War; plus the Warrior's Apprentice, Your First Guide to the Magic of Strategy, Clearbridge (Seattle, WA), 2005.

(With Sun Tzu) Sun Tzu's The Art of War; plus Strategy for Sales Managers, Clearbridge (Seattle, WA), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: Gary J. Gagliardi once told CA: "I started studying [sixth-century Chinese writer] Sun Tzu's competitive strategy in the The Art of War early in my career and almost immediately began becoming tremendously successful in sales and marketing. After starting my own software company, I adapted The Art of War for our sales force and our company took off, becoming one of America's fastest growing privately held companies. After selling my company and gaining financial independence, I decided that I wanted to spend the rest of my career teaching the strategic principles of Sun Tzu. I began speaking to major corporations such as Kraft and Nabisco, and companies such as IBM bought my sales adaptation for all their sales people. Requests from corporate customers led to the creation of more and more special adaptations. When I was diagnosed with head and neck cancer in 2002, my speaking career was interrupted and I began to think more about family and home and how important strategic thinking was to those aspects of life as well. My goal now is [to] show people how life strategies of winning without conflict can help them to meet any challenge in their lives."

To meet his goal, Gagliardi has authored a number of books based on Sun Tzu's philosophies, usually within the "Art of War Plus" book series. Although most have focused on the business arena, he has expanded his approach to include such books as The Art of War; plus the Art of Parenting Teens and Sun Tzu's The Art of War; plus the Art of Love: The Ancient Chinese Science of Strategy, Bing-Fa, for Finding, Winning, and Keeping Lifelong Love. He is also the translator and author of the foreword to The Art of War; plus the Ancient Chinese Revealed. This bilingual translation of Tzu's classic military strategy treatise The Art of War features translated English lines on one page with the facing page printed with the Chinese ideograms and their meanings. Writing on the Warring States Project Web site, a reviewer commented on the author's approach to translating, noting: "The method … is to reduce the original to pidgin English, and if inconsistencies appear, smooth the translation until they vanish."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

DBMS, July, 1990, Kevin Srehlo, "Modifiable by Design," article on Gagliardi's software company.

PC Week, November 1, 1993, Robert L. Scheier, "Son of Sun Tzu," profile of Gagliardi, p. A1.

ONLINE

Gary Gagliardi Home Page, http://www.garygagliardi.com (October 24, 2005).

Warring States Project Web site, http://www.umass.edu/wsp/ (June 13, 2004), review of The Art of War; plus the Ancient Chinese Revealed.