The pinfire system, as invented by Casimir Lefaucheux and expanded by his son Eugene, is one of the most significant corners of cartridge firearms development that has been thoroughly overlooked by collectors and firearms enthusiasts. This was probably the most widespread and relevant cartridge p...

This new book from Mowbray is an English translation of a work originally written in Spanish by Fernando de Aguinaga and Jose Luis de Aguinaga, which clearly involved a tremendous amount of original research. The full title is "Spanish Rolling Block: The Basque Made Rifles of the Third Carlist Wa...

"Weapon Mounts for Secondary Armament" is a nearly 1200-page reference on all manner of machine gun mounting systems for tanks, aircraft,t light vehicles, and ground mounts. The book was commissioned in 1957 by the Detroit Arsenal as a reference for engineers tasked with designing the secondary w...

"The Ross Rifle Story" is the Bible of Ross rifle collecting - it is the only substantial reference work on the subject and it has a tremendous amount of information about the development of the Ross. However, it is also one of the worst-edited firearms reference books I am aware of. It has a sec...

I initially put off getting a copy of Jan Balcar and Ron Clarin's book on the Spreewerk P38 because, well, I assumed it was just about Spreewerk. Upon finally reading it, I discovered that it is actually a very well-rounded history of the P38 as a whole, with particular extra attention given to S...

The Royal North West Mounted Police (later merged with the Dominion Police to become the RCMP - Royal Canadian Mounted Police) are an interesting and often overlooked element of the western frontier. We Americans tend to only think about the Old West up to northern Montana and Idaho, but of cours...

Robert Segel, long-time editor of Small Arms Review magazine, has just published a book on machine gun accessories and equipment, and it's a very valuable new piece of reference material for the community. Mr. Segel has long been a machine gun collector, and has paid particular attention to acces...

One of the perennial challenges facing authors of firearms reference books is balancing the very technical nit-pickery with the broad historical view of a gun and its context in world events. The emphasis is usually tending towards the technical, but Neil Alpinshaw has done an excellent job of ba...

The M14 rifle is a rather controversial arm in American military service. As Frank Iannamico's title says, it was the last steel-and-wood infantry rifle to be adopted by the US military, and it has a great many very loyal and dedicated fans. At the same time, it had the shortest production span o...

I have had several people ask if I might write a book on the development of German military rifles in the same format as my book on French rifles. I do not plan to, in large part because there is a lot of literature on the subject already published in English. In particular, Hans Dieter Gotz' boo...

Having recently finished guiding a WW1 battlefield tour in France and Belgium, I found myself curious to learn more about the details of French tank development and service. We are used to seeing and hearing about the British tanks, but it was actually the French Renault FT-17 light tank that wou...

John C. Simpson has been teaching military and police sniper training since 1985 - nearly as long as I have been alive. I encountered him back when I filmed a video on a Confederate Whitworth sniper, and he helped me correct my explanation of how the British were measuring rifle accuracy and prec...

I have been impatiently awaiting the expanded second edition of Wayne Johnson’s “The FN-49: The Last Elegant Old-World Military Rifle” ever since I heard a rumor that it was in the works. The first edition was printed in 2004, and sold out before I started looking for a copy. There was also a Col...

Anthony Vanderlinden is a noted FN collector and author of a book on FN Mauser rifle as well as this volume on FN's Browning pistols. Both are excellent reference works, with a remarkable amount of contextual information in addition to the very specific detail that appeal to the collector. This w...

Norm Flayderman opened an antique gun shop in 1952, and a few years later expanded his marketing to a mail-order catalog. He would ultimately print 119 such catalogs by 1998, researching and documenting a tremendous amount of information on antique American firearms. In 1977 he published the firs...

Chas Lotter was 22 when, in 1971, he enlisted as a field medic in the Rhodesian Army. He served until 1980, leaving as a Sergeant and emigrating to South Africa. His book, "Echoes of an African War" is a collection of poetry he wrote throughout his military service and in the years after. It show...

Leonard and Guy A-R-West have released the second book in their series on antique military rifles, this time on the Dreyse system. As anyone interested in the Dreyse has probably already learned, there is very little written in English about them, and this book a welcome addition! It includes an ...

Tom Davis Jr, having previously written on the history of the Thompson SMG in British WWII use, has recently released a buyer's guide to the Colt's Thompson SMG. This is not intended to be a history of the gun - although it does include some elements of that, like a remarkably thorough section on...

David Nielsen's newly released book on Chilean Mauser rifles is a tremendous piece of academic work - which is both good and bad. It is 192 pages dedicated to the testing and procurement of the Models 1895, 1912, and 1935 Chilean Model Mauser rifles and carbines (although the focus is much more o...

Over the past 15 year, Dave C. George has compiled three volumes of his book "Carvings From the Veldt", documenting nearly a thousand carved rifles from the Boer War. This is feature almost unique to the Boer War, in which the Boers were really much more of a civilian militia than a formal standi...

Steve Houghton's newly released book "The British Sniper: A Century of Evolution" is an excellent reference on British sniper rifles, accessory equipment, and training from World War One through the present. Where Skennerton's work ends in the 1980s, some of Houghton's best information covers the...

I am normally more interested in military small arms than sporting ones, but the Browning Auto-5 is such an important firearm that it deserves the recognition of and proper small arms enthusiast. It was not only the first long recoil firearm, but also the first viable semiautomatic shotgun - and ...

Published in 2008, "Arming the West" is, as it self-describes, "a fresh new look at the guns that were actually carried on the frontier." Herbert Houze used the sales records of the Shuyler, Hartley, and Graham company to compile a survey of the makes and models of firearms actually shipped to th...

Aircraft armament is an area of firearms study that is vastly under appreciated by most people, largely because it's difficult to study aircraft guns without the aircraft themselves (and those take up a lot of storage space, among other things). William Wolf's book on US WWII aircraft armament is...