It's the nineteenth century. As America prepares for civil war, five men living within ninety miles of one another will change the course of history. The invention and refinement of the repeating firearm-the precursor to today's automatic weapons-means life in America and beyond will never be the same again.
In this riveting work of narrative history, veteran reporter John Bainbridge, Jr. vividly brings to life the five charismatic and idiosyncratic men at the heart of the story: the huckster and hard-living Samuel Colt; the cunning former shirt-maker Oliver Winchester; the constant tinkerer Horace Smith; the resilient and innovative businessman Daniel Wesson; and the skinny abolitionist Christopher Spencer. As the men competed ferociously, each trying to corner the market for repeating weapons, invention and necessity collided in a perfect storm: America was crashing violently towards furious sectarianism, irrevocable tensions, and, of course, bloodthirsty war.
Though capable of firing many times without reloading, astonishingly, the new guns faced a government backlash for using too much ammunition. Sold directly to soldiers, sometimes just as they were walking into battle, they quickly became coveted possessions, both during the Civil War and in the conquering of the West-and thus America's romance with personal firearms was born.
Wide-ranging and vividly told, this is a gripping story of tenacity, conviction, innovation, and pure heartless greed.
Could Be An Entertaining - And Equally Informative - History or Discovery Documentary Series. I went into this book expecting something more along the lines of Nathan Gorenstein's The Guns Of John Moses Browning or Jeff Guin's War On The Border... and got a touch of an amalgamation of the two. Like the Gorenstein book, this book is focused on the lives of a select group of men that became icons of gun manufacturing in the US... and how they got there and what their legacies became. Like the Guin book, this book also tells the surrounding history and places these men's live solidly within their historical context, mostly between the Mexican-American war in the front half of the 19 century and the US Civil War and Reconstruction in the back half of the same century. Unlike the Gorenstein text, you're not going to find a lot of technical discussion of the exact details and features of the guns in question here - though you *will* find quite a bit about the various lawsuits and threats of lawsuits that helped some of these men and hindered others of them. Overall, a solid look at the men and the early days of their empires whose names last even into the new Millennium. Very much recommended.
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23 May, 2022:
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