Book Reviews

Book Reviews

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Book Reviews
  • Book Review: Sturmgewehr! Firepower to Striking Power (New Expanded Edition)

    Collector Grade is known for being a premiere publisher of technical firearms reference books, and I would be willing to argue that "Sturmgewehr!" by Hans-Dieter Handrich is the best book they have yet printed. The book was originally printed inn 2004, and by the time I started looking for a copy...

  • Book Review: The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare by Damien Lewis

    I ordered a copy of Damien Lewis' book on the exploits of British SOE in WWII expecting to find an overview of, well, what SOE had done during the war. That's not quite what this book is. Instead, Lewis has given us essentially a first-person view of SOE's work through the eyes of Danish commando...

  • Book Review: Ott-Helmuth von Lossnitzer, Technical Director of Mauser

    Ott-Helmuth (Otto, after he emigrated to the US) von Lossnitzer was a remarkable firearms engineer. He served through World War One as a machine gunner, gaining extensive experience with a variety of different machine guns that were rebuilt in 8x57mm for German military use, and was called back i...

  • Book Review: Training Rifles of Third Reich Germany

    Robert Simpson's massive project of studying and documenting German training rifles has resulted in this much-anticipated reference tome. At 700 pages and full color, it a tremendous resource for understanding the chronology and features of the dozens if not hundreds of variations of these rifles...

  • Book Review: Vom Ursprung der Selbstladepistole

    Written by Josef Mötz and‎ Joschi Schuy, "Vom Ursprung der Selbstladepistole" (Origins of the Automatic Pistol) is an absolute gold mine of information on early manually operated and self loading pistols. It is limited to Austro-Hungarian designs and is available only in German, but even so it re...

  • Book Review: Vickers Guide WWII Germany (Volume I)

    Get your copy here: https://www.vickersguide.com

    Larry Vickers and James Rupley have expanded the Vickers Guide series of coffee table books to World War Two Germany, to look at one of the periods of the most rapid small arms development in world history. And, in light of full disclosure, they...

  • Book Review - Weapon of Choice by Dr. Matthew Ford

    It may look like an airport bookshop thriller, but don't let the cover fool you - Dr. Matthew Ford's "Weapon of Choice: Small Arms and the Culture of Military Innovation" is a seriously rigorous academic study of the military small arms adoption process. The process is examined through the lens o...

  • Book Review: Vickers Guide AR15 Volume II

    Get your copy here: https://www.vickersguide.com

    Larry Vickers and James Rupley have followed their first volume of AR-15s with a second one - as we should have expected when the first one was title "Volume I". Where the first volume covered the early development of the AR by Armalite and Colt...

  • Book Review: Vickers Guide AR15

    https://www.vickersguide.com

    I don't normally have much interest in coffee-table books, and the Vickers Guide: AR-15 would definitely be considered a coffee-table book. That said, it is substantially different than most such books, and much more worthy of a place in a firearms reference library....

  • Book Review: The Uzi Submachine Gun Examined, by David Gaboury

    "The UZI Submachine Gun: Examined" is a newly published book this year by David Gaboury - long time owner and operator of the uzitalk.com forum. Until now there has not really been any substantive written reference material on the Uzi, but Gaboury has certainly changed that!

    The Uzi has not r...

  • Book Review - The Lee Enfield, by Ian Skennerton

    Ian Skennerton is a leading authority on British rifles, having written extensively on Sniders, Martinis, Enfields, and more. This specific book, "The Lee Enfield" is the most recent iteration of his compendium of Lee-Enfield information, printed in 2007 (previous versions were "The Lee Enfield S...

  • Book Review - The Last Enfield: SA80 The Reluctant Rifle

    Since we are in the midst of an ongoing video series looking at the development of the SA80 weapons family, I figured this would be a good time to mention the single best source of written information on that program: Steve Raw's book "The Last Enfield: SA80 The Reluctant Rifle". Published in 200...

  • Book Review: Testing the War Weapons by Timothy Mullin

    Written in 1997, Timothy Mullin's "Testing the War Weapons" sets out to provide a practical users guide to a wide variety of military rifles and light machine guns from the late 1800s to the present day. Unfortunately, the book suffers for lack of good editing, and comes out rather dry and repeti...

  • Book Review: Firearms Developed and Manufactured in Southern Africa 1949-2000

    Until recently, there has been very little published information on South African and Rhodesian firearms outside of a few sporadic magazine articles - but that is no longer the case! The Pretoria Arms and Ammunition Association has recently published the epic results of a 17-person, 8.5 year long...

  • Book Review: The Schmeisser Myth by Martin Helebrant

    "The Schmeisser Myth: German Submachine Guns Through Two World Wars" is a newly published history of SMG development from the Villar Perosa and MP18 through the MP38 and MP40, written by Martin Helebrant. Given that it is published by Collector Grade, it should be no surprise that it is an excell...

  • Book Review: Pistolas y Subfusiles de la República Producción de Guerra

    "Pistolas y Subfusiles de la República Producción de Guerra" is a new 580-page reference book about the pistols and submachine guns made in the Republican zone during the Spanish Civil War. It is written by three authors - Josep Mª Abad, Manuel Estirado, and Francisco Fuentes - and printed exclus...

  • Book Review: Paul Mauser - His Life, Company and Handgun Development 1838 - 1914

    From the Authors: http://www.lugerlp08.com
    From Amazon: http://amzn.to/2te3O3F

    The new book on Paul Mauser from Mauro Baudino and Gerben van Vlimmeren is an excellent exploration through the labyrinthine corners of the Mauser Archives. Written with an assumption that the audience will already...

  • Book Review: The Italian Vetterli Rifle by Robert Wilsey

    Here in the United States, the Italian Vetterli is overwhelmingly found in the 1870/87/15 guise, and considered unsafe to shoot. However, this is simply the final transformation of a rifle which saw substantial military service and deserves more respect than the often-haggard examples here usuall...

  • Book Review: Handguns of the World by Edward Ezell

    If I had to choose just one firearms book to keep (for some inexplicable reason), Edward Ezell's "Handguns of the World" would be on the short list of books to consider. It is a remarkable combination of history and mechanics, or the most common and the most obscure, and extensive detail at a ba...

  • Book Review: Deadly Beauties - Rare German Handguns

    Deadly Beauties is a photographic collection of rare and collectible German pistols from 1871 through 1945, split into two volumes. The written sections are quite brief, and the photography is beautiful. More importantly, the photography was well directed by the authors, focusing on the details o...

  • Book Review: Captured Arms (Beutewaffen)

    Get a copy for yourself here: http://www.sipublicaties.nl/

    "Captured Arms (Beutewaffen)" by Guus de Vries is Volume 9 of the Propaganda Photo Series by SI Publicaties out of the Netherlands. I really like the whole series, as they do a very good job of combining really interesting original pho...

  • Book Review: The Wipers Times

    Get your copy here: https://amzn.to/2jzWnkI
    Or here: https://amzn.to/2JOpMm3

    The Wipers Times was a satirical trench newspaper printed from February 1916 until December 1918 by British Captain F.J. Roberts and a crew of assistants. Such papers were not particularly uncommon, but the Wipers Ti...

  • Book Review: Vickers Guide, Kalashnikov Volume 1

    Available direct: https://www.vickersguide.com/books

    I am proud to announce the newest book in the Vickers Guide series: Kalashnikov (Volume 1)! Cowritten by Larry Vickers, Rob Stott, and myself, this is a beautiful exhibition of 7.62x39mm AK rifles (smallbore AKs and other types will be cover...

  • Book Review: Experiment and Trial

    Experiment and Trial, by Mathieu Willemsen, is a catalogue of the 218 guns in the collection of the Dutch School of Musketry, which existed from 1855 until 1933. It includes a large number of very unusual prototypes, as the School was a testing ground for designs submitted by inventors hoping to ...