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Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, And Pyrotechnics: The History Of The Explosive That Changed The World

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Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, & Pyrotechnics: The History of the Explosive that Changed the World, by Jack Kelly, Basic Books, NY, 2004. Kelly had done a very nice job with this crisp, well written history of gunpowder. He covers the subject nicely, in survey fashion, but with some detailed stories. There's history, technology, and science-all in fine factual detail but for the general audience. The chemistry, mathematics, metallurgy, and physics are there, but not in rigorous detail. Just enough to whet the appetite for further study. References are included for each chapter, though footnotes are lacking.

A detailed study of the history of gunpowder and related technologies could have gone on for thousands of pages. The author has selected certain stories for focus. He begins in China, and tells especially the European story, and the use of firearms in battle, on land and at sea. He includes some stories from America including the Revolutionary War, the story of Samuel Colt, and the Dupont story of gunpowder. He ends with development of the A-bomb, but really coverage ends at the beginning of the Twentieth Century with smokeless powder. There is no mention of lead mining or the famous shot towers. Kelly covers the abundance of saltpeter in the warm climate of China, its general shortage in Europe, and the extensive efforts to collect and extract it in Britain and France. But there is no mention of the Nobel Prize winning Borne-Haber process, invented in World War I in Germany, that resolved the nitrate shortage by making synthetic nitric acid from air and fossil fuels (natural gas, naphtha, coal), as is still practiced today.

The book is highly readable and will be appreciated by those interested in history, science, and technology. Index.

Kelly starts with the invention of gun powder in China and goes through 1900. I found the book very enlightening, as well as a fun read. Kelly describes how powder was originally invented by Chinese alchemists, use by the Chinese to fight off the Mongols, adaptation by European powers, the parallel development of guns and cannons, and societal effects like ending the age of castles and spurring the development of chemistry. The chapter on the Duponts was interesting. Highly recommended.

"Better living through chemistry" was the motto of the Du Pont Corporation. Actually, it would have been more accurate to have said "Better killing through chemistry." Du Pont was at the apex in the history of gunpowder, getting out of the outdated business only in 1971, but by then gunpowder had over ten centuries of effects on history. In _Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, & Pyrotechnics: The History of the Explosive that Changed the World_ (Basic Books), Jack Kelly has tied the explosive chemical not only to changes in war and international history, but has explained its effect on the inchoate sciences of chemistry and physics. Kelly more often writes as a novelist, but here shows an impressive range of facts laid out with a novelist's eye to entertainment.

It is well known that the Chinese invented gunpowder (a combination of sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter), but it is not true that the Chinese were happy to use gunpowder for fireworks and never used it in war. They had incendiaries and primitive guns. The gun was originally viewed as the weapon of cowards. That anyone could use a gun, and that the results of such use were distant and consisted generally of random havoc rather than, say, a well-placed slice from a sword, took some of the valor out of fighting. By the sixteenth century, cannons had developed into forms that would still be used in the American Civil War. There was little scientific input into making either gunpowder or guns; it was, rather, the work of craftsmen who were the earliest engineers. The craftsmen had to put up with an inherently dangerous arena. Not only were accidental explosions common, but barrels inevitably exploded. Gunpowder burns at hundreds of degrees hotter than the melting point of iron, and every shot eroded the barrel.

There is a good deal of military history here, naturally, and lots about the effects of gunpowder or lack thereof on such wars as the American Revolution or the Civil War. Gunpowder had other effects, societal ones, changing the importance of class. Kelly writes that since it enabled commoners to hold in their hands a new form of lethal power, gunpowder was "...among the elements that fertilized the long slow growth of feelings of rights and entitlements that would blossom into democracy." It also inspired physics. Studying the trajectory of cannonballs, Galileo was able to overthrow the classical physical theories of Aristotle. Newton, building on this, performed the famous thought experiment of firing a cannonball harder and harder from a mountain, hard enough eventually that the ball would only fall in maintaining an orbit around the earth; from there it was but a jump to celestial motions. Eventually, gunpowder was surpassed by better chemicals; investigations into nitroglycerin and dynamite in the 19th century brought better-burning, safer means of shooting guns and cannons. "Black powder" is now the name given to the gunpowder which is the subject of this interesting and wide-ranging history. It is still manufactured, much going to the army of hobbyists and historical reenactors. The greatest market, however, merely shows that things have not changed too much. We take the same delight in fireworks as the Chinese did a thousand years ago, and use the same gunpowder for the charge.

Gunpowder was a great and awe inspiring fun product when it was invented in China about a thousand years ago, but then the stuff grew up to blast warfare into the modern world before retiring to once again be a great fun and awe.

Kelly is a good writer who clearly understands history, and offers a clear concise story about the impact of gunpowder. It helped propel western society to world dominance, even though it was invented and widely used outside Europe; yet, Europeans made it truly destructive and an element of domination. Kelly quotes a sixteenth-century diplomat who summed up the conquering mind-set, "Religion supplies the pretext and gold the motive."

In that vein, he also sums as the character of Samuel Colt "as typically American: abrasive, self-made, persistent, eminently practical in his thinking, as imaginative as he was mercenary, an opportunist, a liar, a genius." If these qualities, plus the lust for gold, turned Europeans into world conquerors using gunpowder, square-rigged ships and a variety of other innovations, then we need hardly be surprised if similar horrors are used against us.

In other words, gunpowder was the means but not the motive for changing the world. Kelly also suggests "an irrational antagonism toward non-Christians, Moslems in particular." In other words, gunpowder was perfected by secular scientists and used by greedy opportunists under the cover of religious fundamentalism to dominate the world.

Kelly raises these questions; but, quite rightly, leaves them unanswered. This is a book about gunpowder, not national psyches or ambitions. Kelly outlines the innovative and highly effective uses of gunpowder through the ages; given his history of the stuff, it leaves every intelligent reader open to ponder the questions of the multiple roles in which it was used.

Quite frankly, a similar book could be written about the development of square rigged ships "that changed the world." But then, how many books on dominant weapons systems are needed to repeat the obvious? He offers a wealth of background and opinions on the early use of gunpowder, then the reader to discern the motives, noble or otherwise.

His examination falls short of formulae and chemical reaction diagrams, which would have been nice but perhaps superfluous and possibly dangerous; a careful reader can probably piece together a working formula, but probably not a dangerous one. It isn't the sort of book that young boys will use to blow up the outhouse; but, it does present a fascinating glimpse of just what our ancestors had to put up with to make today's world.

Until I read this book, I thought I knew a little about gunpowder -- having made my own "fizz powder" and used black powder pistols. For me, Kerry opened up a vast new vista that turned my early efforts into a farce and left my previous knowledge in a thimble. In comparison to my teaspoonful of knowledge, he gave me a bucket of factinating insights.

You don't have to love gunpowder, loud noises, bombs bursting in air or movies such as "Master and Commander," to love this book. Kelly makes story of gunpowder relevant for all and leaves you all the more interested in how our modern world came to be.

As a boy, I wondered why my attempts at making gunpowder failed so miserably--I knew I had the ratios of saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur right, and I had mixed it thoroughly. But still it fizzled. I never really figured it out until I read this book, some fifty years too late.

Jack Kelly is an entertaining writer, and knows how to research a topic such as the history of gunpowder to the point of near exhaustion. For me, the central question raised by the book is the observation that while it was invented in China, they actually made little use of it outside of fireworks. Why was it that the West took their invention, surrounded it with a steady stream of innovative developments in guns and organization, and competed in a steady diet of endless warfare to implement them on a large scale? Kelly really never answers this question, but that is all right--this is not the sort of work that can authoritatively get at it.

I particularly enjoyed the section on the development of the sources of saltpeter and the efforts to produce a pure and consistent product. In an age before chemistry, the process developed only slowly, but develop it did. Made from fermenting dung piles as a cottage industry, it was a costly bottleneck for centuries.

Kelly traces how gunpowder and the development of processes for improving the strength and size of cannon interacted to produce a steady improvement in metallurgical science. All sorts of spin-offs and scientific developments followed. Few materials have had such a long period of development and use, so there are plenty of fascinating anecdotes and historical oddities for Kelly to relate. And over and over again we learn how important to progress the simple act of measuring and recording the results of trials were. An arty seat of the pants approach just wouldn't do the trick.

The book has many illustrations that really helped in telling the story, and I much appreciated them. This is a book well worth reading; it is lively and instructive, and awfully entertaining.

It didn't take long for me to realize this history book was more about telling a story than it was a reference book. Kelly's description of fire and how man could manipulate it to make explosions let me know that this would be an entertaining read. It was. And, that was just the prologue.
I found myself engrossed in his story of how Black powder was born and progressed through history much like a man ages. Developing from an entertaining infant (Oriental fireworks), to an influential adult (as a strategic commodity that changed governments, national borders, and economies) then again as an old man, replaced by today's high explosives, serving predominantly to entertain his grandchildren (today's modern fireworks).
I am a chemist with over 20 years experience working with explosives. I still found this book entertaining and educational. As I read, I dog-eared multiple pages and underlined passage after passage of rich descriptions of chemical processes, mechanical processes, and historical observations (in a lifetime of studying and teaching chemistry I knew of the important contributions made by Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier; but, I didn't know the role explosives played in his life and death).
In addition to explosives enthusiasts, the book should be read everyone with an interest in the Revolutionary War or the Civil War. Their understanding of those conflicts will be incomplete without understanding the tactical and practical impacts of GUNPOWDER.

Jack Kelly has written an easy-to-read overview of the evolution of gunpowder development and use from its invention at the turn of the first millennium until it was replaced by synthetics in the 19th century. In fact, synthetics so thoroughly replaced gunpowder that what was once gunpowder is differentiated from its replacements by the term "black powder" while synthetics have taken over the germ gunpowder.

Beginning with its invention and use by the Chinese, who first used gunpowder in an early version of (ineffective) hand grenades, through its first effective use in bombards in Europe, until it became the staple for small arms in the early modern period of history Kelly presents an interesting narrative history on how gunpowder impacted the world. Although there is a technological deterministic aspect to the book (a natural result of the subject) the book does do a good job of putting gunpowder into context - in some cases gunpowder drives further military developments, in others the refinement of gunpowder is driven by other needs. This book is especially interesting if you have any interest in the concept of "military revolution." It focuses on one type of tool over a 900 year period, which allows you to see how one technology evolved, and was integrated into the transformation of war, over a significant period of time.

I liked the authors' treatment of the subject, and his plausible explaination for how Gunpowder evolved as a resource, as well as the impetus for modern warfare. He brings up quite a few points which make for intersting reading. Definitely one of the better books I read in 2004.

This is one of those social histories, rather than a serious attempt to cover every aspect of something. Instead of writing everything that could be known about gunpowder, the author instead keeps you interested and involved by writing a shorter, more interesting book that covers most of the basics without bogging down. The result is an entertaining look at the world of explosives from their inception until the end of the 19th century, when the original version of gunpowder was superceded by newer, more efficient compounds.

There is much to be learned here: the Chinese using the material to entertain themselves, and propel rockets at their enemies; the inventors in Europe who knew the powder was volatile, but not why; bishops asked to provide their urine as a component for the powder; a gunner who was made to do penance because he managed to fire his enormous gun three times in one day (he must have made a deal with the devil); and so forth. Author Kelly brings all of these characters together, and makes the whole very interesting.

This is a very good book, with a lot of interesting information in it. The military parts of the book tend to be rather sketchy (the Civil War boils down to the battles of Petersburg, Gettysburg, and Mobile Bay, for instance) but the overall effect is to make a book that's readable and not to technical. The rest of the book, dealing with the refining of the technology and its uses, is interesting, if similarly brief. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject, or anyone who reads general non-fiction.

I've been a great fan of Jack Kelly's for some time, having read all of his riveting "noir" novels. He now changes hats and delves into historical narrative with the astounding new book, "Gunpowder".
I'm not a huge consumer of historical non-fiction, but this book is a real page turner. Kelly obviously has a knack for bringing out the drama inherent in history.
I was astounded by the immense role gunpowder has played in the outcome of history, from the rise of the European nation-state, to the very map of the world as we know it today.
"Gunpowder" offers a fasinating take on the past thousand years of human history and the monumental influence one particular technology has had upon it.