Early in the production of the C96 Mauser, the company tried a variety of different configurations of the pistol, to see what would be popular and sell well. Most of these were abandoned by about 1902, when the design was more or less standardized to the version were are familiar with today. One ...

While Czechoslovakia was a part of the eastern bloc, it did a pretty thorough job of developing its own weapons rather than use standard Russian designs. For example, the vz52 pistol, vz52, 52/57, and 58 rifles, the uk59 light machine gun, and more. Well, their military sniper rifle was closer to...

The CZ-52 really isn't a forgotten weapons yet, but it is a pretty interesting gun mechanically, and well worth taking a look at. About 200,000 of them were made in Czechoslovakia from 1952 to 1954, and they served as that country's standard military sidearm for several decades (which the rest of...

Last week, we talked a bit about obsolete firearms controls over at the ForgottenWeapons.com blog, and that discussion made me think of a fairly recent pistols with a fairly unique feature, the Browning BDM. Mechanically, the BDM is a pretty standard modern automatic pistol - it uses the ubiquito...

Since we are in the middle of a series on French rifles, I figured it would be an appropriate time to take a look at what printed reference books are out there in English on the subject of French military arms. Unfortunately, the selection is very limited, and only two of these are still in print...

Shotguns are a subject I don't cover much, and I'll admit that's because of a prejudice on my part. I just don't find most of them to be particularly interesting...but then I had the chance to take a look at a collection that included a bunch of mechanically unusual and pretty fascinating shotgun...

Having previously read and quite enjoyed Gordon Bruce' Evolution of Military Automatic Pistols, I was looking forward to checking out his much more in-depth volume on the Webley semiautos, appropriately titled Webley & Scott Automatic Pistols. Webley automatics don't seem to very widely known her...

During the latter half of the 1800s, a significant fraction of the world's military forces were being armed by the Remington brothers, and their factory in Ilion, New York. The Remington Rolling Block was one of the most durable, reliable, and effective single-shot breechloading rifles available,...

I bought a Remington Model 8 a couple months back, and I've been remiss in not putting together a video on it - it's a very neat rifle. Instead (for the time being), I figured I should talk about the Remington Model 8 book - because there really is only one. It's The Great Remington 8, by John He...

I got an email from a fellow a few days ago asking if there is a good book out there on the Vickers gun, so I figured it would be a good time to do a review of Dolf Goldsmith's gold standard work, The Grand Old Lady of No Man's Land. The good news is that it covers pretty much everything you woul...

One of my favorite books to just flip through at random is Dolf Goldsmith's The Devil's Paintbrush: Sir Hiram Maxim's Gun. Every time I open it, I find another detail of information that I had overlooked or under-appreciated before - it is a wealth of information on the Maxim gun in all its forms...

BSA (Birmingham Small Arms) was the largest private arms maker in the UK during World War One, and when the war ended it of course saw its huge military contracts evaporate. One of BSA's efforts to develop new markets and product lines was to devise a series of self-loading pistols. These also in...

Today's book is Pistols of World War I, by Robert J. Adamek. It's a good overview of all the significant handguns used by combatants on both sides of the war (90 pistols among 16 countries). There isn't a whole lot of description and history for each individual gun, but they do each have statisti...

I'm not normally all that interested in sporting double guns, but the name Fosbery perked up my ears when I heard about this book. Col. George Fosbery is best known (in some circles, anyway) for the Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver, but he had several other significant patents and inventions to ...

We have had several people ask us about the small softcover books printed by Osprey about various types of firearms, so today we're looking at a couple of them. Osprey has a whole series of firearms volumes, including pretty much all the important military arms of the 20th century. Think of them ...

I've been studying up on Japanese WWII firearms recently, and when it comes to rifles my go-to resource is Fred Honeycutt's book Military Rifles of Japan 1897-1945. It isn't the newest book on the subject, nor does it have as much information on specific types as the more focused volumes that hav...

Most folks are aware of the M1941 Johnson semiauto rifle, which competed valiantly, but unsuccessfully, with the M1 Garand for the position of standard US service rifle during WWII. What most people aren't as familiar with is the story of Melvin Johnson, and the other projects he was involved in ...

Japanese Nambu pistols used to be widely ignored as inferior and uninteresting, but prices have been climbing in recent years (as with all Japanese wartime arms). As prices rise, it is beneficial have as much information as possible about the guns, to ensure you are getting the gun(s) you really ...

The Iver Johnson company doesn't get much respect or recognition these days, but they made a staggering number of generally very good, inexpensive handguns for many decades. The "cheap" image of the brand has largely prevented a significant collector appeal, and in turn a lack of good research or...

I normally don't have all that much interest in coffee table type gun books - the glossy photos are nice, but they generally don't have all that much actual information. I had assumed initially that "Handguns of the World" was another of these books, but I was quite mistaken. I initially gave it ...

I've always been primarily interested in military small arms, and more specifically early/mid 20th century ones at that. I need to broaden my horizons, though, and I've been reading more and more about older guns. When I found a copy of George Markham's Guns of the Wild West at a local used book ...

Our book today is German Flare Pistols and Signal Ammunition, by Dr. Lorenz Scheit (and edited in English by Dr. Geoffrey Sturgess). This is a 700-page, full-color tome covering more flare pistols and ammunition for them than you had any idea existed.

Simpson Ltd puts out Deluxe editions of se...

Flying Guns of World War I is an excellent work on aerial weaponry up to 1932, from the very first hand weapons up to heavy cannons. It goes into detail on not just the guns, but also the aircraft and tactics of the time. Pick up a copy from Amazon and enjoy!

Central Powers Pistols, by Jan Still, is a bit of a neither-fish-nor-fowl book. It has many more and better quality photos than most heavy-duty reference works, but also has much more detailed information (particularly on markings and serial numbers) than most coffee table volumes. I wasn't reall...