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Delacorte
November 2008
On Sale: October 21, 2008
512 pages
ISBN: 0553805177
EAN: 9780553805178
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
George Washington insisted that his portrait be painted
with one. Daniel Boone created a legend with one. Abraham
Lincoln shot them on the White House lawn. And Teddy
Roosevelt had his specially customized. Now, in this first-of-its-kind book, historian Alexander
Rose delivers a colorful, engrossing biography of an
American icon: the rifle. Drawing on the words of soldiers,
inventors, and presidents, based on extensive new research,
and encompassing the Revolution to the present day,
American Rifle is a balanced, wonderfully entertaining
history of this most essential firearm and its place in
American culture. In the eighteenth century American soldiers discovered that
they no longer had to fight in Europe’s time-honored way.
With the evolution of the famed “Kentucky” Rifle—a weapon
slow to load but devastatingly accurate in the hands of a
master—a new era of warfare dawned, heralding the birth of
the American individualist in battle. In this spirited narrative, Alexander Rose reveals the
hidden connections between the rifle’s development and our
nation’s history. We witness the high-stakes international
competition to produce the most potent gunpowder . . . how
the mysterious arts of metallurgy, gunsmithing, and mass
production played vital roles in the creation of American
economic supremacy . . . and the ways in which bitter
infighting between rival arms makers shaped diplomacy and
influenced the most momentous decisions in American
history. And we learn why advances in rifle technology and
ammunition triggered revolutions in military tactics, how
ballistics tests—frequently bizarre—were secretly
conducted, and which firearms determined the course of
entire wars. From physics to geopolitics, from frontiersmen to the birth
of the National Rifle Association, from the battles of the
Revolution to the war in Iraq, American Rifle is a must
read for history buffs, gun collectors, soldiers—and anyone
who seeks to understand the dynamic relationship between
the rifle and this nation’s history.
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