The Gun - The Story of the AK-47

 The AK-47, or ‘Kalashnikov’, is the mostabundant and efficient firearm on earth. It is so light, it can be used bychildren and it never jams. It has transformed the way we fight wars, and itsstory is the chilling story of modern warfare. It is the everyman’s gun, usedby guerrilla, terrorists and dictators everywhere. The Gunfeatures villains and idealists, profiteers and killers, superpowers andrevolutionaries and tells the incredible story of how the Kalashnikov hastransformed the way we fight.

C. J. Chivers’s extraordinary and hugely detailed new book, which I found fascinating and frightening in equal measures, tellsan alternative history of the world as seen through these terrible weapons. Hetraces them back to their origins in the early experiments of Gatling andMaxim, and examines the first appearance of the machine-gun – a weapon thatfirst created the ‘asymmetric’ colonial massacres enjoyed by the British inAfrica but which then led to the nightmarish stalemate of the First World War.The quest for ever greater firepower and mobility culminated in the AK-47 at thebeginning of the Cold War, a weapon so remarkable that, over sixty years afterits invention and having broken free of all state control, it has becomecentral to civil wars all over the world.

“They don’t break, they can be used by children, and there are up to 100 million of them. The AK-47 has changed war” – Sunday Times

A book for history buffs (me) and those fascinated by guns (not me).

About the author:

C. J. (ChristopherJohn) Chivers is a seniorwriter for The New York Times. He was an infantry officer in the USMarines from 1988 to 1994 and served in the First Gulf War. He is the recipientof numerous prizes, including a shared Pulitzer for International Reporting in2009 for coverage of the war in Afghanistan.He has reported from many of the major war-torn areas of the world. Hecurrently lives in Rhode Island, United States of America.