Customer Reviews

The Illustrated Book of Guns: An Illustrated Directory of Over 1,000 Military, Sporting, and Antique Firearms

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

 

 

Well I'm pretty neutral on this book. It features many good pictures of good guns, inlcluding some that I've never seen (the Terry Pattern Carbine, Kuntz Air Rifle, and Whitney-Burgess Carbine stick out). However, it has more typos and misplaced photos than you can imagine! Two examples are the editor not knowing how to spell the "Keene" part of the Remington-Keene Rifle and placing the bizarre-looking Webley-Fosbery Semiautomatic Revolver's photo on the description of the conventional Webley & Scott Mark V's description (the weapon is clearly stamped "Webley-Fosbery", too). There are also errors in the statistics of the weapons, but these are probably due to typos more than factual mistakes. The descritions, in some cases, are also too scant (the aforementioned Kuntz Air Rifle needs a little more and the book fails to mention the famous Ferguson Rifle, though many of the photos appear to be taken at the West Point Museum, which has a Ferguson Rifle on display). In summary, if you like over 1,000 gun photos, then get this book. If you don't like over 1,000 typos, then don't get this book.

This was a very disappointing book! There were glaring mistakes present in the text/descriptions, some to the point of hilarity. A couple of examples include: A description of a rifle and the accompanying picture is not even close to the one being described. Another is where the author/editor says that the original .45 Colt loading was with 617 grains of black-powder! :D (This would almost fill up a couple of shot glasses!)
These are just a few of the many mistakes that I noticed in the few minutes that I looked at the book.

I would not recommend this book to anyone, except for the illustrations. There is very little information given on each firearm, and what is given is either incorrect of suspect at best.

Over 1000 firearms (handguns, shotguns, rifles, and machine guns) are described in the 304 pages of this large, coffee-table size book. Each description has an excellent photo of the firearm and a thorough description of it, including its history. Almost all of the important small arms from 1800 to the present are described. The quality of the writing, photos, and presentation is excellent.

Great illustrated text of the history and details of famous firearms. Although this is not an all inclusive list of firearms it has all of the historical as well as technical innovative firearms of the world, my only complaint is its grouping of firearms by country. This is now one of my favorite books to add to my more technical books on firearms.

Despite having good descriptions, the book does not contain enough modern guns, and lists too many ancient ones. For example, there is not a single mention of a Glock handgun in the whole book! Worthless, in my opinion.