By Will Fowler, Anthony North, Charles Stronge, & Patrick Sweeney
Hardcover 512 pages
Available from Rowman & Littlefield
1-800-462-6920
$35 + $5 shipping
This is a big 11 &1/2” X 9” book with 1100 photos covering rifles, pistols, submachineguns and machineguns throughout history.
Beginning with the first firearms and tracing the development of guns through the ages down to the present day the book endeavors to tell as complete a story as space permits with chapters on subjects of particular interest. Thus we have chapters on “The gun that won the West,” “Guns of the Empire,” “Silenced guns,” “Specialist and personal defense,” etc.
There are separate sections of pistols and revolvers, submachineguns, rifles, and machineguns followed
by their use by specific countries. In all fairness to the book, to be complete would require at least as many volumes as a regular set of encyclopedias if not more yet this book tries hard to give a good overview in the space available.
As many guns in each category as possible are covered with excellent color photographs interspersed with a few historical black and white photos from the past. You can look up many famous guns past and present and also read a bit about them, which can be quite useful and enjoyable. You can pick up this book anytime and find something interesting to read without worrying about missing the plot because you did not start at the beginning.
Like any book of this scope there are errors. The most ridiculous is on page 317 where it is stated of the WWI German Maxim water cooled MG08 machinegun “Sustained firing would lead to overheating.” Water cooled machineguns don’t overheat. That is why they have water cooling. The Maxim 08 is famous for firing nonstop for an indefinite period so long as you keep water in the water jacket and loaded belts coming, changing the barrel every 15,000 rounds.
On page 316 it also states that the MG08 was “Virtually a direct copy of the 1884 Maxim.” There were many drastic improvements made right after the first 1884 gun. While the basic mechanism remained even the shape of the gun changed both internally and externally.
Despite some errors this is a handy reference book at a very cheap price for it’s size and scope and one that you can enjoy reading.—Jim Dickson
