Nonfiction, Current Affairs; 416 pages
Publication year: 2011 (UK edition)
Published in the UK by Penguin
Stickiness factor (could I put it down?): No More Nails
Random quote:
The ballistics of the rifle and cartridge are also studied, including the so-called terminal ballistics - the effects the rounds have on objects they strike, from a wooden board to a car windshield to various parts of the human body, which can be determined, to a degree, by shooting large live mammals (adult pigs are a favourite; goats have often been used) or human cadavers.
Plot summary:
In 1947 a invalid sergeant in the Red Army Mikhail Kalashnikov won a state-sponsored design competition to create Stalinist Russia's new standard issue assault rifle. Named after an acronym of its designer's name and the year of its design, the Avtomat Kalashnikov-47, better known as the AK-47, has become the world's most recognisable and prolific firearm. Its history and status means that it is instantly recognisable as the symbols of both state control and armed rebellion. Setting the gun in its historical context, Pulitzer Prize winning author CJ Chivers examines this twentieth century icon, looking passed the myths and misconceptions to reveal the true history of the gun that has come to define warfare.
My thoughts:
Despite following up my review of Matterhorn, by Karl Marlantes, the very first on this blog, with a review about weaponry, I am not some barrel-chested redneck who thinks that the Rambo series should seriously be implemented as foreign policy. Honest. And this book is not about fire-rates, great battles, armchair strategy or dismantling guns, blindfold, in under a minute.
Instead, CJ Chivers examines the wider implications of the AK-47 on societies and on warfare itself. No one is quite sure how many of these assault rifles there are in the world at the moment, Russia zealously used the rifle as a means of securing friendships with countries diplomatically at odds with the USA and now many of the former beneficiaries that manufactured this weapon under licence from Russia have lost control of their vast stockpiles. It is safe to say, where ever there is news footage of armed insurgents, the AK-47 is always there, being brandished for the camera.
But the AK-47 wasn't the beginning of the story, in fact it is not even the end. Chivers traces th history of the machine gun from its beginnings as Dr Richard Gatling's rapid fire machine gun, patented in the USA in the 1860s, to America's disastrous implementation of its M-16 assault rifle during the Vietnam war, then onwards to its ubiquitous presence in conflicts such as Afghanistan.
Although the book uses the AK-47 as the Plimsoll mark for the ubiquity of assualt rifles in the world today, Chivers' story is wider than that and means that the story is a wider and more varied one than a gun geek's listing of all of the features of the weapon. As with all popular history books that I have read, there is an emphasis on the often eccentric innovators that have propelled these weapons into the world. Hence there are sizeable sections on Gatling's crank handle operated gun, which he hoped would reduce battlefield casualties, through Hiram Maxim's first fully automatic weapon and then to Kalashnikov himself - as much a product of Stalinist Russia as the gun that bears his name. There are also some strange byways covered, such as the shooting of livestock and corpses (as referenced above), which help to bring home the messy, painful reality of firearms.
One of the problems of writing about the AK-47 is that its true origins are shrouded in state secrecy and fogged with propaganda. Chivers gives the reader a series of stories relating to the gun's creation and lets us make up our own mind. Personally, I always find that the most prosaic explanation is always the one that rings truest - real life is rarely as full of startling coincidences as a good yarn. Possibly due to this historical inaccuracy, or possibly due to Chivers' own experience, he seems more at ease with telling the story of the disastrous introduction by the US of the M-16 rifle. Certainly it is terrifyingly gripping, as the leaders of the US armed forces colluded with the M-16's manufacturer to knowingly send men out to battle with defective weapons. Errors occur, serious errors, and others pay the price. As riveting as this section is, there is a lingering feeling that Chivers feels more at home writing about US troops and military history.
I have another couple of little niggles about the book, which on the whole I enjoyed reading.
The first is that sloppy copy editing means that the text has not differentiated between the national flag of Zimbabwe and its flag. On page 225, Chivers states that the AK-47 appears on the Zimbabwean flag. Unfortunately, this is not true. A representation of it appears on the country's coat of arms. It is on the Mozambique flag that the Kalashnikov features. Ha! Got you Chivers. Pointless pedantry triumphs again!
The second niggle is based on a throwaway remark made while Chivers is discussing Maxim's move to Britain to work on his full automatic machine gun. The line that is this: "The Industrial Revolution had not blossomed as fully in England as it had in the United States." While I know that he is paraphrasing Maxim, it is the word 'blossomed' that rankles. I am British, and it is a core point of history at school to ram home the fact the the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, through British invention and engineering. I found myself spluttering out my cup of tea and saying 'Blossomed? Blossomed? We invented it, mate. But still, the book does something for 'national pride' by hammering home the fact that both Britain and the United States proved totally inept, backward and out of touch, when it came to dealing with tactics and planning for automatic weapons. If anything, it is Russia, where cars were true rarities, that comes out as the true innovator in the mechanics of death. A dubious honour, I realise.
The book is fascinating and terrible, grizzly and compelling. With only these minor faults from stopping it being a true marvel; much like the AK-47 itself.
You can buy The Gun from Amazon and a bucket load of other places.
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