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Product Description
Product Description
This is a comprehensive, highly illustrated guide to military, law enforcement and antique firearms throughout history. It includes a history of firearms from the medieval hand cannon to today's FN Minimi light machine gun. It contains directories of arms from around the world, organized by country of manufacture, and features key specifications for each weapon, including calibre, magazine capacity, barrel length and unloaded weight. With 1100 colour photographs and artworks, including cutaway diagrams to show internal components and gun operation, this comprehensive encyclopedia is both an expert reference work and stunning visual directory, explaining the development of arms, and showing the individual specifications of modern weapons. The history of arms begins with 14th-century hand cannons and outlines technological advances, such as the percussion principle and the beginnings of the modern cartridge system, as well as the rise of mass production and the craft of the gunmaker. Modern arms are then explained, covering the materials and technology including Super Magnum revolvers, semi-automatic pistols and assault rifles. The directories offer an unparalleled photographic guide to the most significant pistols, revolvers, rifles, submachine and machine guns. Grouped according to country of origin, each gun's features are listed, as are the military, political and technological context in which each gun was developed.
About the Author
Will Fowler is the author of over thirty books covering military technology and conflicts. He has also served for nearly thirty years in the British Territorial Army. Anthony North has worked for many years at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, giving him a wide knowledge of public and private collections of firearms. Charles Stronge is an experienced editor and writer, specialising in politics, international affairs and military history. He served for six years in the British Territorial Army. Patrick Sweeney is the Handgun Editor for Guns & Ammo magazine and has written a number of books and articles
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
We live in an age of general editorial negligence, it seems, and of course most buyers of a book like this will be chiefly interested in the pictures, but still, when a publisher promises "authoritative text by leading firearms experts", someone really should look the whole thing over attentively before it goes into print.
Just flipping through, I notice that the authors seem to think that Costa Rica is a Caribbean island (page 356). A bit further on (page 361), it is claimed that "since 1870, Paraguay has been at peace with her neighbours." Oh really? What about the Gran Chaco war with Bolivia (1932-1935), in which 36.000 Paraguayan soldiers died?
Regarding firearms history specifically, there clearly are important gaps in the authors' collective knowledge. For instance, it is repeatedly (pages 380, 455) stated that in modern times, the Netherlands never manufactured their own military small arms (apart from a short run of AR-10 rifles in 1959-1962 for export). In reality, in the period up to WW II, the Dutch Artillerie Inrichtingen produced, among many other things, roughly half a million Mannlicher rifles and carbines, and many thousands of machine guns of various models.
What I find really disturbing is that four British experts together are apparently unable to correctly identify a Webley Mark VI revolver (page 59 - in fact, it's a picture of a much earlier model). Switched captions are of course the bane of firearms books, and this one is no exception: S&W Models 36 and 19 (pages 119-120) for example. And Bulgarian AKs are allegedly made by FÉG in Budapest.
Finally, while the other directories are limited to military arms, in the handgun section there are many guns which have never seen military service and never will, at least not as standard issue handguns; I have no real objection to that, but why on earth is so much space devoted to Para-Ordnance? No less than twenty-six variants of the same basic model are shown, while many handgun manufacturers who have been around much longer and have produced a much larger variety of guns get much less attention. The authors are certainly laying themselves open to suspicions of commercial interest here.
Just flipping through, I notice that the authors seem to think that Costa Rica is a Caribbean island (page 356). A bit further on (page 361), it is claimed that "since 1870, Paraguay has been at peace with her neighbours." Oh really? What about the Gran Chaco war with Bolivia (1932-1935), in which 36.000 Paraguayan soldiers died?
Regarding firearms history specifically, there clearly are important gaps in the authors' collective knowledge. For instance, it is repeatedly (pages 380, 455) stated that in modern times, the Netherlands never manufactured their own military small arms (apart from a short run of AR-10 rifles in 1959-1962 for export). In reality, in the period up to WW II, the Dutch Artillerie Inrichtingen produced, among many other things, roughly half a million Mannlicher rifles and carbines, and many thousands of machine guns of various models.
What I find really disturbing is that four British experts together are apparently unable to correctly identify a Webley Mark VI revolver (page 59 - in fact, it's a picture of a much earlier model). Switched captions are of course the bane of firearms books, and this one is no exception: S&W Models 36 and 19 (pages 119-120) for example. And Bulgarian AKs are allegedly made by FÉG in Budapest.
Finally, while the other directories are limited to military arms, in the handgun section there are many guns which have never seen military service and never will, at least not as standard issue handguns; I have no real objection to that, but why on earth is so much space devoted to Para-Ordnance? No less than twenty-six variants of the same basic model are shown, while many handgun manufacturers who have been around much longer and have produced a much larger variety of guns get much less attention. The authors are certainly laying themselves open to suspicions of commercial interest here.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This item was bought for my son-in-law who thinks this book is excellent. Extremely well illustrated and informative and cannot 'put it down'
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Quite disappointing...
This book clearly states in the title that it is an 'encyclopedia' of firearms, antique to the present day. Read more
Published 8 days ago by L.C
A sure-fire winner.
Does what it says - a very comprehensive run down on just about every fire arm produced up to its publication date. Goes into ample detail about each gun. Read more
Published 3 months ago by James Bond
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