At a secret arms-design contest in Stalin's Soviet Union, army
technicians submitted a stubby rifle with a curved magazine. Dubbed
the AK-47, it was selected as the Eastern Bloc's standard arm.
Scoffed at in the Pentagon as crude and unimpressive, it was in
fact a breakthrough--a compact automatic that could be mastered by
almost anyone, last decades in the field, and would rarely jam.
Manufactured by tens of millions in planned economies, it became
first an instrument of repression and then the most lethal weapon
of the Cold War. Soon it was in the hands of terrorists.
In a searing examination of modern conflict and official folly, C.
J. Chivers mixes meticulous historical research, investigative
reporting, and battlefield reportage to illuminate the origins of
the world's most abundant firearm and the consequences of its
spread. The result, a tour de force of history and storytelling,
sweeps through the miniaturization and distribution of automatic
firepower, and puts an iconic object in fuller context than ever
before.
The Gun dismantles myths as it moves from the naive optimism of the
Industrial Revolution through the treacherous milieu of the Soviet
Union to the inside records of the Taliban. Chivers tells of the
19th-century inventor in Indianapolis who designs a Civil War
killing machine, insisting that more-efficient slaughter will save
lives. A German attache who observes British machine guns killing
Islamic warriors along the Nile advises his government to amass the
weapons that would later flatten British ranks in World War I. In
communist Hungary, a locksmith acquires an AK-47 to help wrest his
country from the Kremlin's yoke, beginning a journey to the
gallows. The Pentagon suppresses the results of firing tests on
severed human heads that might have prevented faulty rifles from
being rushed to G.I.s in Vietnam. In Africa, a millennial madman
arms abducted children and turns them on their neighbors, setting
his country ablaze. Neither pro-gun nor anti-gun, The Gun builds to
a terrifying sequence, in which a young man who confronts a trio of
assassins is shattered by 23 bullets at close range. The man
survives to ask questions that Chivers examines with rigor and
flair.
Throughout, The Gun animates unforgettable characters--inventors,
salesmen, heroes, megalomaniacs, racists, dictators, gunrunners,
terrorists, child soldiers, government careerists, and fools.
Drawing from years of research, interviews, and from declassified
records revealed for the first time, he presents a richly human
account of an evolution in the very experience of war.
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