The history of American firearms is inseparable from the history of the United States, for firearms have played crucial roles in the nation's founding, westward expansion, and industrial, economic, and cultural development. This history unfolds in compelling words and images in "A Legacy in Arms," a volume that draws upon the collections of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City to trace the business and art of gun making from the early national period to the turn of the twentieth century. With more than 200 images--almost all in full color--"A Legacy in Arms" not only documents the inspiration and innovation of arms makers from individual artisans to mass producers, but also describes the development of decorative expression in the gun maker's art.
In an account both entertaining and enlightening, Richard C. Rattenbury details the development of commercial arms making, from the genesis of the Kentucky rifle to the arms of such iconic manufacturers as Colt, Remington, Smith & Wesson, Sharps, Marlin, and Winchester. Into this narrative he weaves the particulars of design evolution and the impact of mass production via the "American System." The accompanying photographs and illustrations stand as eloquent testimony to the range and richness of the gun maker's craft--and its rightful place in the story of American industry and culture.

Burton K. Wheeler (1882-1975) may have been the most powerful politician Montana ever produced, and he was one of the most influential - and controversial - members of the United States Senate during three of the most eventful decades in American history. A New Deal Democrat and lifelong opponent of concentrated power - whether economic, military, or executive - he consistently acted with a righteous personal and political independence that has all but disappeared from the public sphere. Political Hell-Raiser is the first book to tell the full story of Wheeler, a genuine maverick whose successes and failures were woven into the political fabric of twentieth-century America. Wheeler came of political age amid antiwar and labor unrest in Butte, Montana, during World War I. As a crusading United States attorney, he battled Montana's powerful economic interests, championed farmers and miners, and won election to the U.S. Senate in 1922. There he made his name as one of the ""Montana scandalmongers,"" uncovering corruption in the Harding and Coolidge administrations. Drawing on extensive research and new archival sources, Marc C. Johnson follows Wheeler from his early backing of Franklin D. Roosevelt and ardent support of the New Deal to his forceful opposition to Roosevelt's plan to expand the Supreme Court and, in a move widely viewed as political suicide, his emergence as the most prominent spokesman against U.S. involvement in World War II right up to three days before Pearl Harbor. Johnson provides the most thorough telling of Wheeler's entire career, including all its accomplishments and contradictions, as well as the political storms that the senator both encouraged and endured. The book convincingly establishes the place and importance of this principled hell-raiser in American political history.