La edad de la pólvora

This fascinating book, which according to Jared Diamond "is essential reading for debates on universal history, and exciting, dramatic and attractive as a novel", shows us what was the role of firearms in history. It offers us a new vision of the centuries in which China remained the first military power and its subsequent mysterious decline, which allowed Europe to triumph in world domination. A story that concludes by giving new relevance to the statement made by Napoleon: "China is a sleeping lion, when it wakes up the world will tremble." Specialists have pointed out the importance of Andrade's contributions to studies on the divergence between East and West, and his complete renewal of the topics on the military revolution in a book that, says Sarah C. Paine, a professor at the Naval War College from the United States, "reads like a whodunit."