Pistols, Revolvers, And Ammunition – Reference Handbook
This book is intended to fill what has long appeared to us an enormous gap in the english language literature of handguns.
Handgun literature is rich in hyperspecialized works an particular brands and models of guns of interest to advanced collectors.
However, many beginning students of the handgun, lacking the foundation and overall context which such books presuppose, find them virtually impenetrable.
Often enough the authors of these imposing tomes aggravate the situation by concentrating an minute variations of the model that interests them, to the near exclusion of the mechanical principles and historical importance of their subject.
There seemed to us a need for a book, which dealt directly with the handgun and its cartridge, put both the mechanical evolution and the historical development of the modern handgun in a comprehensible context and unlike W. H. B. Smith’s classic “The Book of Pistols and Revolvers”, was readable from end to end and presupposed no prior knowledge an the part of the reader, and which, starting from zero level, took him a substantial way up the ladder to general expertise.
This book is not intended to be the final word an anything, nor can it pretend to be a primary source or reference. If it serves to introduce several among you to the inexhaustibly rich field of study which the handgun has been for us, if it answers a number of the questions for which we ourselves had difficulty finding the answers when we were beginners in the field, if it serves to raise still more questions to which the more specialized books in the bibliography hold the key, it will be worth the task of its writing.
The ultimate beginners reference book of handguns.
Covered in this comprehensive guide to hanguns:
- Introduction
- Acknowledgments
- Preface to the French Edition
- The Basics
- The Mainstream of Handgun History
- Revolvers
- Automatic Pistols
- Cartridges
- Ballistics
- History’s Greatest Handguns
- Colt 1860 “New Model Army”
- Colt 1873 “Single–Action Army”
- Lefaucheux 1858 French Navy
- Saint–Étienne Mle 1892
- The Webley Top–breaks
- Mauser 1896 “Broomhandle”
- The Luger
- Walther P–38
- Colt M1911 “Government Model”
- Browning P–35 “High Power”
- The Petter Pistols
- Beretta Models 1934 and 1951
- Walther PP and PPK Models
- “Undercover” 38 Snub
- Smith & Wesson Model 19 “Combat Magnum”
- The Handgun of the Future
- Gun Legislation and the Shooting Sports in France
- Firearms Legislation in the United States
- Bibliography
- Index