norman read and liked Shurms's review of Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power:

"Brave indeed is the academic prepared to take on the cultural relativists in todays academy, but Hanson, like the Westerner he is, suits up here for a massive ground assault straight up the gut. He will surely piss off the fashionably PC crowd who ha...more Brave indeed is the academic prepared to take on the cultural relativists in todays academy, but Hanson, like the Westerner he is, suits up here for a massive ground assault straight up the gut. He will surely piss off the fashionably PC crowd who have been reared to despise just about anything Western simply with his first chapter heading, 'Why the West Won.' Based upon his observation that for over 2500 years, the chief military worry of Westerner armies has been other Western armies, Hanson goes on to explore exactly why that has been the case, arguing that cultural determinants, rather than say biological or topographical ones, have shaped the West into the most successful and, yes let's say it, superior fighting civilization.(less) "

norman read and liked Ginny's review of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy:

"An interesting, if a bit dry, primer on learning theory as seen through a pastime that has few defenders in academia. "