Since being hit with the whole book is kind of a lot to deal with at once, I have decided to blog it. Once I get going, my plan is to put up one chapter per weekday, along with additional commentary.
So, if you feel like going through the whole thing at once, by all means read the book on this site, but if you would like a more leisurely, social experience, head over to the blog.
The Way of the Consultant is a new English mistranslation of the Dao De Jing -- from a book of philosophy for the ancient Chinese scholar-sage, to a book for the modern software developer.
The Dao De Jing is a book of elegant, elliptical poetry. Cryptic and ambiguous as well as ancient, it is notoriously difficult to translate adequately, although this has not stopped it from being one of the most-translated books in history.
If you're looking for a serious translation, you're in the wrong place. This book is mainly intended for an audience of software developers and engineering geeks, and my main expectation is to be entertaining. Hopefully, serious students of either Chinese classics or of Daoism will be entertained as well!
And, while I have tried to remain as true to the spirit and letter of the original as these circumstances permit, I have no pretensions of scholarship -- this is a "translation" from English to English, after all.
Nonetheless, I still have some hope that the result might be edifying as well as entertaining -- I think the underlying philosophy holds up under abuse much better than the poetry does.