American Gun: A History of the US in Ten Firearms

This book has been out a while now. I'm about half way through. This is an easy read, written by someone any American can respect. Now the bad. I'll be honest with you - I'm very, very surprised at the inaccurate history in it.

The bulk of this inaccurate history regards the 1903 Springfield rifle. He gets the reasons that they wanted the rifle correct, and then goes on to say that we developed a good rifle, the 1903, and that the Germans developed a good Mauser as well. He then talks about the licensing fees we were forced to pay to Mauser because we copied the rifle - and he implies that the rifle is the Spanish Mauser!

No, no, no!

We were impressed with the Spanish Mauser, sure. But it wasn't the rifle we copied/improved - that rifle was the Gewehr 98!

I now have to take everything I read with a grain of salt. :|

Okay, I'll bite.

It wasn't the rifle we copied....it was the action. Which was....

....a Mauser.

And the specific action we copied was the action in the Gwehr 98, which was radically differecnt than the action in the Spanish Mauser - or even the '96 Swedish Mauser. The '98 cocks when you rotate the action up. All previous Mauser actions cocked when you slide the action forward, just after the extractors start to remove the round from the internal magazine.

Actually, I think that was a hold over from the Krag. Springfield designed the action, in part, by reverse engineering Mausers captured during the Spanish American War.

Does this inaccuracy render the broader theme incorrect? The reason I ask is because I generally enjoy this type of book, that uses a single focus (in this case gun evolution) to tell a larger story. If the larger story still works, I'm not too concerned if some of the micro details are wrong.

The 1903 is a copy of the 1898 Mauser.

That is what was decided in court.

Link

I can understand that if you spot the inaccuracy, but I won't, so it could be okay for me. I've got a few of these books lined up -- the next one is a history of civilization through alcohol, but I could see the gun book at some point.

My deal with authors making mistakes like that is that it makes me wonder what other mistakes they might've made. My philosophy has always been, "If you can't get the 'little' stuff right, how are people going to trust you to make sure the 'big' stuff is correct?"

That said,I do see gul's point. I've noted several technical mistakes in some of Stephen Ambrose's books (such as the German Panther being armed with an 88mm gun), but he got the overall story right. It did lower my opinion of his work, though.

I thought some of the Panthers were armed with 88 mm main guns?

Only the Jagdpanther tank destroyer. The Panther Ausf F was supposed to be armed with the 88, but the war ended before any were produced.