Reviews for The Gun

The average rating for The Gun based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-07-14 00:00:00 Brad Bradley I was pretty intrigued when I had come across this book - a book about a gun, even if it happens to be one of the most recognized and probably most feared guns in the world. I found that the author had served in the US Marines and won a shared Pulitzer for covering the Afghan war. Hmm! Probably the best person to write such a book. The name AK-47 in this book encompasses original and all the derivatives and knock-offs of the gun. The book not only tries to chronicle the origin and widespread use of the rifle, but tries to set the richer context - how the miniaturization and simplification of rapid-fire weapons, politics and national arming decisions have shaped war and influenced security in large sections of the world. The book delves into how the earlier precursors to the machine guns such as the Gatling and the Maxim guns came into existence. Initially such guns were used by the colonial forces against the native soldiers as the former sought to "civilize" the "savages". Later some countries would realize their value as efficient killing machines in conventional warfare. The author has a commendable job of tracing the origin of the AK-47, the rifle he refers to as "Stalin's gun" and which changed warfare forever. Though Mikhail Kalashnikov is regarded as the inventor of this weapon, the author shows how it was a child of the Soviet political climate and ambitions, and how the Soviet policies would make it the most ubiquitous weapon in the world. The story of the AK-47 is remarkable indeed, and I liked the way the author had presented the usage of the weapon in wars, rebellions and terrorist attacks. Slowly the governments would lose control over the gun and it would end up as the weapon of choice for terrorists, insurgents, and criminals. There are quite a few "horror" stories where the rifle was used as a tool of death - its use by the African child soldiers was more horrifying than its use by Eastern Bloc forces and terrorists. The author's depiction of the weapon's symbolism was great - when terrorists wield or do not wield their AK-47s in front of the camera, they are trying to send out a message. The gun has found place in the flag of a country and not surprisingly in the flags of terrorist groups. The author has made a valid point - the AK-47 is probably the biggest brand of the Soviet. Look at movies, shooting games, TV series, and comics - if there is a terrorist or a Russian soldier, he will carry the AK-47. It is a legacy which had outlived the state that had created it. An AK-47 rifles has a longevity of decades. The author ends with the hope that the guns out in the market - in the hands of child soldiers, terrorists, gangsters would one day break down and the rifle would cease to be a significant factor in war and terrorism. A wonderful hope, but knowing the deviousness of the human mind bent on inflicting death and misery on fellow humans, some other weapon, maybe something even more lethal, would surely find its way into the hands of the killers. As I have mentioned before, the book is well-written and it is thoroughly researched. Kings, dictators, soldiers, rebels, profiteers and terrorists populate the pages of the book and there are tales of bloodshed, massacres and wars. It made for a compelling read, and it made me aware of the evolution of the rifle, and enhanced my understanding of how modern firearms affected the history of mankind. I do understand this book would not appeal to everybody, but I think readers who have an interest in military history would like the book.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-10-31 00:00:00 Doctor Ilea The AK-47 holds almost mythological status in the world. Terrorists, revolutionaries, and insurrectionists all brandish this Russian-made weapon in defiance of those in power. Chivers calls it "a ready equalizer against morally or materially superior foes." The U.S. decided to be more sophisticated and complicated and outfitted its soldiers with the M-16, a weapon I remember hearing it being loathed by soldiers just returned from Vietnam as chronically unreliable. A theme of the book is the United States' failure to design a gun of similar technical merits to the AK-47. Chivers estimates there are currently over 100 million of these lethal weapons floating around out there, a staggering number., a weapon he describes as "the most lethal instrument of the Cold War." It was first produced the same year as the Russians detonated their own atomic bomb. The AK-47 could be considered a form of machine gun, so Chivers spends a considerable portion of the book to the history of machine guns. Ironically invented by a southern slave-holder, Richard Gatling, it was offered by the inventor to Lincoln in 1864 to support the Union cause. His reasons were philanthropic if naive. He reasoned that if one man could control the firepower of several with his Gatling gun, there would be need for fewer soldiers on the battlefield and thus fewer casualties. He was distraught over the number of wounded returning from the front. The US Army purchased the first Gatling guns in 1866. Foreign governments found them particularly useful in destroying native uprisings.even though they were notoriously unreliable. There was nothing worse than to have a machine gun jam while being descended upon by thousands of screaming natives. "The Gatlings jammed and the colonel dead," was Sir Henry Newbolt's line in 1897. Hiram Maxim's gun ("the most dreadful instrument I have ever seen or imagined," was the Archduke William of Austria's comment) took killing to a new level. His gun was much more reliable (he had been born in Maine, then emigrated to the UK) water-cooled and belt-fed design was lighter, requiring not a carriage but merely a tripod and variations remained in use well into the 1960's. Thinking they had a huge advantage, the British knighted Maxim (his gun was renamed the Vickers) but in German hands it proved to be quite useful in mowing down British soldiers. The British actually mistrusted the machine gun as being extraordinarily wasteful of ammunition. One of the most mind numbing aspects of WW I is the willingness of troops to attack barbed wire emplacements defended by machine guns. It was wholesale slaughter on an unimaginable scale. The forerunner of the AK-47 and M-16 was the Schmeisser, an assault rifle that entered the war in 1944. The AK-47 was designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov and while his name has always been associated with the gun, Chivers says it was really a product of the Stalinist state. Chivers also asserts that much of what we think we know about Kalashnikov was reworked to fit the requirements of Communist propaganda. The Russians, contrary to those in the west who championed the more accurate rifles, believed in mass assaults and required weapons with high rates of fire. What makes the Kalashnikov so different is the almost loose fitting of the parts. They clank around and rattle but it would work even after being subjected to extremes of the battlefield and weather. The U.S. decision to ignore the lessons of the Kalashnikov lies at the feet of Robert McNamara who had heard of an incredibly lethal weapon (the lethality tests were conducted on live goats and cadavers imported from India, an extremely sensitive topic) produced by the ArmaLite Company in California. The impact of its bullets was so messy and destructive that the Americans just had to have it for the nascent war in southeast Asia. That it required a different bullet than the standard 7.62 NATO round even though that standardization had been imposed on NATO by the U.S. The M-16's malfunctions became a scandal during the Vietnam War, but Colt, maker of the gun, blamed the soldiers' poor cleaning habits. By this time, the top brass had become so linked with the decision to manufacture the weapon, they supported Colt. One soldier when asked by his commander why he carried a captured AK-47 instead of the M-16 simply replied, "because it works." According to Chivers, the Army in Afghanistan uses the M-4 carbine but the current generation's platoon has much more firepower in the form of other types of weapons than the Taliban who use the AK-47. Still, he wonders if the unsophisticated IED may yet cause the downfall of the more technologically advanced. Another triumph of the simple over the complex. (See for another example.) A more depressing theme of this book is how American exceptionalism prevents us from connecting to peoples whose motivations are high and technologies unsophisticated, yet in the end, as in Vietnam and elsewhere, manage to beat the more technologically advanced. Chivers is a former Marine officer and war correspondent. He writes well, if frighteningly, in this fascinating work that details the political and psychic effects of the Cold War on policy and decision-making, often to our detriment.