Customer Reviews

Gun Digest 2011

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

But the editing stinks. I know some people think this is nitpicking, but it's distracting and undermines the reader's faith in the material and enjoyment of reading to regularly see what look like OCR errors (like an exclamation point in place of a lowercase L in the middle of a word) throughout the book. That might just be enough to knock off a star, but it's much worse: I noticed two places where a column break obviously cut off some amount of text. How much? Who knows? It could be a sentence, or it could be ten paragraphs.

Many of the articles are quite good, and they're well chosen: there are articles on all different kinds of hunting, shooting, and collecting topics, and they were good enough to keep my interest even where I had no particular interest in the subject. For the most part, it's just a fun book to sit down and kill an evening with. But the pervasive evidence that nobody cared enough to read the text after it was pasted into the print file definitely hurts the experience.

Gun Digest is legendary for its Reports From The Field articles. This year's edition does not disappoint in that regard. Also included are a wealth of handy ballistics charts. I did find, however, that the section of listings for semi-auto rifles was very sparse -- nowhere near a comprehensive listing of what's out there on the market. If you buy the Gun Digest to do some armchair shopping for semi-auto rifles, you'll most likely be disappointed. Too bad. If the author was to beef up the firearm listings, Gun Digest could be quite the definitive, comprehensive digest that it comes close to being.

They don't have the polished pages (but they're still in color) in the beginning articles but I understand that for environmental reasons with coated paper, so I appreciate that (but still miss it in everything!). Anyway, that has nothing to do with the great artiicles & coverage of guns they put out every year. A must-have book for anyone considering buying guns or want to stay current with the market & new designs; I think Gun Digest does the best job overall.

It's very informative except there were many guns displayed but no price available for comparison to other similar models.

There are some interesting, well researched and useful articles in this latest edition of the venerable digest. The reference tables that take up about a third of the book are not so relevant as all of that information is now available on-line, but that distracts not the least from this classic book.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, Gun Digest really was a complete reference on the US gun market. It listed, just about every new gun, cartridge, powder and accessory on the market. It was great entertainment, too; there were dozens of fascinating articles on history, hunting (including tales from legends like Peter Hathaway Capstick!) competition, gunsmiths, and more. Every new volume was a reference book, an education, and plenty of good off-season reading.

Today's Gun Digest is different. On one hand, the laws of the land have greatly restricted the kinds and numbers of arms being imported. No more interesting small European pistols like the Baby Brownings and the Beretta Minx. At the same time, there's a lot more variety out there in ammunition and components, which means there's no way that Gun Digest can really hope to deliver more than a sampling of what's new and what's out there. The writers have changed, too. We see more polished, processional writing, but a good deal less of that I-was-there writing from characters like Colonel Jeff, probably because those characters just aren't around any more.

So it's a different kind of book today. But although it may not be the all-in-one reference of many years ago, it's still a useful reference, and still entertaining to read. I may not buy every new edition that comes out, but I've still managed to accumulate a stack of them over the years.

I buy the gun digest every year for product information and pricing as well as the great articles. Much cheaper than newstand prices.

I purchased this book for the balistics tables, but you can't even read them on the kindle. They are way too small when condensed on the kindle.

The 2011 Gun Digest is a year old, but the savings are allot compared to the advertised price when first published. The information and descriptions in the book are still informative. The copy I received was "new".

The feature articles are better this year than in other recent issues. The new editor seems to be making an improvement.