Understanding Firearm Ballistics

Everything you ever wanted to know and much more. I have only started reading this as book. It is both a readable book and good reference.

Very much an in depth look at the subject of ballistics, however technical it may be, it's not a hard read. The author does a good job of discussing the matter in way not to leave the layman out in the dark. However, the mathematical sections would leave Einstein with a headache. The author suggests using a scientific calculator in these sections, but also suggests that you can skip over this part all together as well. It depends on how deep you want to get into the matter.

The layout, grammar, organization, printing quality, etc. make the text seem jumbled and unclear. Many topics are covered in a "hand-waving" manner, and use terms without explaining them adequately beforehand. I feel that they dumbed it down a bit too much to be very useful. I wish they had gone a good bit more in-depth with the math/physics instead of constantly throwing in space-wasting comments like "Oh don't be scared of the math it's really simple" and "The math looks scary, but don't worry about what it means ... here's all you need to know ... " etc. Ballistics is a physical science and you can't learn it without knowing mathematics and basic physics. It's foolish to try to write a book on ballistics that attempts to avoid or oversimplify the mathematical/physical aspects ...

The book was good enough for me to get a mediocre overview of the field, and pointed me to areas where I can do further research, but nothing more. This is a decent book, but most definitely not great.

If you are not already conversant in the facts and math of ballistics this is a fairly good primer, and it does have some useful information for those that already know a lot. It does not, however, fill that middle range between the basics and PhD engineering texts. Although the formulas for various ballistic factors are included, he does not go into the math in detail. That means that unless you are an ace at multi variable calculus already, and have taken a bunch of physics, then this is not a lot of help. The book is largely aimed ad debunking as many uninformed old wives tales as possible and getting people to think scientifically. Thus if you are looking to learn more about firearms physics than you are going to find in a gun magazine, it is a good reference. If you are looking to learn about the physics of shooting at ranges over 1,000 yards, you are going to find only limited help.

This book is Ballistics explained throughly in plain words.

As for the mathematics, the author simply states the equations of physical laws and then with each subject simply mentions the solution equations without the mathematical logic/process. The book is also very pooly illustrated. However you can understand everything except the mathematics very well with expert insights into every aspect of the subject.