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The Gun, September 2011
Paperback / e-Book (reprint)
The Gun, October 2010
Hardcover / e-Book
Simon & Schuster
October 2010
On Sale: October 12, 2010
496 pages
ISBN: 0743270762
EAN: 9780743270762
Kindle: B003V1WT7C
Hardcover / e-Book
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Paperback (reprint - September 2011)
Non-Fiction | Non-Fiction History
At a secret arms-design contest in Stalin’s Soviet Union,
army technicians submitted a stubby rifle with a curved
magazine. Dubbed the AK-47, it was selected as the Eastern
Bloc’s standard arm. Scoffed at in the Pentagon as crude and
unimpressive, it was in fact a breakthrough—a compact
automatic that could be mastered by almost anyone, last
decades in the field, and would rarely jam. Manufactured by
tens of millions in planned economies, it became first an
instrument of repression and then the most lethal weapon of
the Cold War. Soon it was in the hands of
terrorists.
In a searing examination of modern
conflict and official folly, C. J. Chivers mixes meticulous
historical research, investigative reporting, and
battlefield reportage to illuminate the origins of the
world’s most abundant firearm and the consequences of its
spread. The result, a tour de force of history and
storytelling, sweeps through the miniaturization and
distribution of automatic firepower, and puts an iconic
object in fuller context than ever before.
The
Gun dismantles myths as it moves from the naïve optimism
of the Industrial Revolution through the treacherous milieu
of the Soviet Union to the inside records of the Taliban.
Chivers tells of the 19th-century inventor in Indianapolis
who designs a Civil War killing machine, insisting that
more-efficient slaughter will save lives. A German attaché
who observes British machine guns killing Islamic warriors
along the Nile advises his government to amass the weapons
that would later flatten British ranks in World War I. In
communist Hungary, a locksmith acquires an AK-47 to help
wrest his country from the Kremlin’s yoke, beginning a
journey to the gallows. The Pentagon suppresses the results
of firing tests on severed human heads that might have
prevented faulty rifles from being rushed to G.I.s in
Vietnam. In Africa, a millennial madman arms abducted
children and turns them on their neighbors, setting his
country ablaze. Neither pro-gun nor anti-gun, The Gun
builds to a terrifying sequence, in which a young man
who confronts a trio of assassins is shattered by 23 bullets
at close range. The man survives to ask questions that
Chivers examines with rigor and flair.
Throughout,
The Gun animates unforgettable characters—inventors,
salesmen, heroes, megalomaniacs, racists, dictators,
gunrunners, terrorists, child soldiers, government
careerists, and fools. Drawing from years of research,
interviews, and from declassified records revealed for the
first time, he presents a richly human account of an
evolution in the very experience of war.
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