The Illustrated Book of Guns: An Illustrated Directory of over 1,000 Military, Sporting, and Antique Firearms

I found this a really stunning intro into the world of guns and gunsmithing. Everything is completely clear, and the excellent illustrations mean that even the non-expert can really enjoy the book andget the most from the author's clear and concise information. I would certainly recommend the book to anyone with an interest inthis field.

This is a VERY comprehensive book which runs the gamut from early firearms up to and including (most of) the modern arms found today in sport or military usage. The photos are first rate, as are the descriptives at the beginning of each chapter.

I can overlook the typos (frequent as they might be) in favor of the sheer history of featured weapons, such as the guns of the old west, and the civil war era.

The book is also sectioned off into pistols/revolvers, rifles/shotguns, submachine guns, light machine guns, and heavy machine guns.

Most every country that manufactures these firearms is covered, although some glaring omissions are present, most notably the Walther P99 auto pistol. Since this volume came out in 2000, it would defy logic that this weapon would NOT be included, since it's appearance in 1998-1999.

Still, this is a nice addition to ANY coffee table (or bookshelf), and is well worth the paper it's printed on.

Despite having good descriptions, the book does not contain enough modern guns, and lists too many ancient ones. For example, there is not a single mention of a Glock handgun in the whole book! Worthless, in my opinion.

Great illustrated text of the history and details of famous firearms. Although this is not an all inclusive list of firearms it has all of the historical as well as technical innovative firearms of the world, my only complaint is its grouping of firearms by country. This is now one of my favorite books to add to my more technical books on firearms.

Well I'm pretty neutral on this book. It features many good pictures of good guns, inlcluding some that I've never seen (the Terry Pattern Carbine, Kuntz Air Rifle, and Whitney-Burgess Carbine stick out). However, it has more typos and misplaced photos than you can imagine! Two examples are the editor not knowing how to spell the "Keene" part of the Remington-Keene Rifle and placing the bizarre-looking Webley-Fosbery Semiautomatic Revolver's photo on the description of the conventional Webley & Scott Mark V's description (the weapon is clearly stamped "Webley-Fosbery", too). There are also errors in the statistics of the weapons, but these are probably due to typos more than factual mistakes. The descritions, in some cases, are also too scant (the aforementioned Kuntz Air Rifle needs a little more and the book fails to mention the famous Ferguson Rifle, though many of the photos appear to be taken at the West Point Museum, which has a Ferguson Rifle on display). In summary, if you like over 1,000 gun photos, then get this book. If you don't like over 1,000 typos, then don't get this book.