The Gun - The Story of the AK-47

 The AK-47, or ‘Kalashnikov’, is the most abundant and efficient firearm on earth. It is so light, it can be used by children and it never jams. It has transformed the way we fight wars, and its story is the chilling story of modern warfare. It is the everyman’s gun, used by guerrilla, terrorists and dictators everywhere. The Gun features villains and idealists, profiteers and killers, superpowers and revolutionaries and tells the incredible story of how the Kalashnikov has transformed the way we fight.

C. J. Chivers’s extraordinary and hugely detailed new book, which I found fascinating and frightening in equal measures, tells an alternative history of the world as seen through these terrible weapons. He traces them back to their origins in the early experiments of Gatling and Maxim, and examines the first appearance of the machine-gun – a weapon that first created the ‘asymmetric’ colonial massacres enjoyed by the British in Africa 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 the beginning of the Cold War, a weapon so remarkable that, over sixty years after its invention and having broken free of all state control, it has become central 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. (Christopher John) Chivers is a senior writer for The New York Times. He was an infantry officer in the US Marines from 1988 to 1994 and served in the First Gulf War. He is the recipient of numerous prizes, including a shared Pulitzer for International Reporting in 2009 for coverage of the war in Afghanistan. He has reported from many of the major war-torn areas of the world. He currently lives in Rhode Island, United States of America.