The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Historic Rise of the West

Tonio Andrade, a professor at Emory University, has written a well-researched, balanced comparative history of military innovation in Asia and the West in which he challenges the traditional notion–set forth most compellingly by Victor Davis Hanson in Carnage and Culture and Niall Ferguson in Civilization–that Western culture largely explains Western global predominance in the post-medieval world.