Today we have a book with a wider appeal than most, as it covers a broad range of different gun designs and has lots of good information for both the very technical collector and the casual pistol enthusiast. It’s Gordon Bruce’s new book, The Evolution of Military Automatic Pistols: Self-loading Pistol Designs of Two World Wars and the Men who Invented Them. What Bruce has put together are short biographies of twenty five automatic pistol inventors/designers – the individuals behind the automatic pistols that shaped the industry from the very early (Borchardt, Mannlicher, Browning, etc) to some that are still widely available today (Tokarev, Barthelmes, and Marengoni, to name a few). Most authors and resources focus on the guns and leave out any discussion of the the inventors behind them, and it’s interesting to find out about the lives of these men, and their other paths through life. This is a perfect book for someone who is interested in different gun designs on a wider scale, not looking for the minute details of variants on a single design.
Father’s Day is coming up, and this book is a perfect gift for the father in your life -something he will really enjoy instead of a tie or just a card. 🙂 You can grab a copy from Amazon right here, just in time:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1931464537/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=forgoweapo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1931464537
At Forgotten Weapons I think the most interesting guns out there are the most obscure ones. I try to search out experimental and prototype weapons and show you how they work, in addition to more conventional guns that you may not have heard of before. You’re much more likely to find a video on the Cei Rigotti or Webley-Fosbery here than an AR or Glock. So, do you want to learn about something new today? Then stick around!
Items you may have missed...
Book Review: Special Service Lee-Enfields by Ian Skennerton
Book Review: FN Browning Pistols by Anthony Vanderlinden
Book Review: German Flare Pistols and Signal Ammunition by Dr Lorenz Scheit
Book Review: The Grand Old Lady of No Man’s Land, by Dolf Goldsmith
Book Review: The Ross Rifle Story
Ian Reviews the Greatest Book Ever: Chassepot to FAMAS