Firearms: An Illustrated History

As an avid fan of military history I have several volumes for reference and this is a real diamond. It covers pistols, rifles, light and heavy machine guns and artillery as well as the development of ammunition from black powder to self contained rounds. If you want a good solid starting point then you could do a lot worse than starting from here

Great book for History buffs! My son and husband love looking and discussing with the book. So great.

Ótimo livro adorei

Si

Something of a coffee table picture book, which is not a bad thing. This book includes beautiful color pictures of small arms and artillery from matchlocks to modern firearms. I bought this book because I wanted some information about the change over from flintlock firearms to percussion cap weapons; this book answered my questions. For sure, it is a very useful reference work. Particularly beautiful are the pictures of the elaborately inlayed and engraved “Ottoman” rifles from the 17th and 18th centuries. Perhaps it’s nit picking, but I may as well point out a few of the books weaknesses. To begin with, the book was assembled with the expert assistance of four consultants. Three of the four are Brits; Henry, Rimer and Smithhurst. Now, I have nothing against our British friends and they are true experts in their field, but this does give a bias to the entries. American contributions to firearms design as well as descriptions of weapons of interest to American gun enthusiasts have been “thinned” a bit in favor of a more European bias. No doubt, an aspect of this issue is that there is a LOT of ground to cover, but that leads to my second criticism. The book includes artillery. This is surely interesting, but the focus could have been maintained on small arms; small arms alone is a plenty big enough subject area to cover and this would have allowed a more comprehensive treatment of the relevant area of primary interest. And the artillery entries are particularly thin, perhaps because the authors recognized that with this addition, they were wandering a bit out of the main subject area. Notable in being absent from comprehensive discussion are (in no particular order); the M16/AR-15. This is a true oversight as this weapon was ground breaking in the late fifties when it was originally developed. And it is also an excellent example of weapon’s modularity that has been an important development in small arms as they are now a mature technology. There is NO mention what-so-ever of Ronnie Barrett’s contributions to rifle (especially sniper rifle) technology. This is truly unfortunate as his interesting and intimidating rifles have made serious contributions on the modern battlefield. Gas seal revolvers are discussed (the Joseph-Lang; 1855) but little to no mention is made of probably the most famous gas seal revolver of them all; the Belgian designed Nagant. It would have been nice if some of the experts from the NRA National Firearms Museum could have been included on the consultants list. But perhaps that would have led to “too many cooks in the kitchen”. I don’t know. “Firearms: an Illustrated History” is a beautiful book and well worth owning. The subject of firearms is such a large subject area that perhaps is it inevitable that no one book could ever hope to cover everything.

Excellently researched and very interesting