American Gun
Subtitle: A History of the U.S. in Ten Firearms
Publisher: William Morrow
Published: 2013
Place of publication: New York, USA; London, UK
Language: eng
Description: From the Introduction...

When I decided to do this book, I didn’t want to write a stodgy textbook, or sound like the teachers who used to put me to sleep in the back of the classroom. I aimed to talk history with the bullets flying: the critical single rifle shot of the Revolutionary War; the climaxes of the Battle of the Alamo and Custer’s Last Stand; Abraham Lincoln’s personal shooting range on the White House grounds. I wanted to explore some of the greatest U.S. military battles of the twentieth century; the St. Valentine’s Day massacre; and the North Hollywood bank robbery and shootout in 1997, which caused American police forces around the country to radically rethink their approach to firearms self-defense, and to gear up for combat.

[...]

I’ve picked ten guns to serve as the flagship weapons for our tour of America’s past. Now, I have to say, it’s my personal list. If you’re a gun-history buff, you’ll agree with some of my choices and disagree with others. I’m sure you’ll be scratching your head wondering why in the hell I didn’t talk about this Remington or that Smith & Wesson. I understand completely. A top-ten list is tough to settle on, and you may come up with a list of your own you like much better.
Table of contents: label: Foreword by Taya Kyle; label: Introduction; title: The American Long Rifle
label: 1; title: The Spencer Repeater
label: 2; title: The Colt Single-Action Army Revolver
label: 3; title: The Winchester 1873 Rifle
label: 4; title: The M1903 Springfield
label: 5; title: The M1911 Pistol
label: 6; title: The Thompson Submachine Gun
label: 7; title: The M1 Garand
label: 8; title: The .38 Special Police Revolver
label: 9; title: The M16 Rifle
label: 10; label: Epilogue; label: Afterword by Taya Kyle; label: Acknowledgments; label: Appendix: The Ten Guns, by the Numbers; label: Source Notes; title: Index