20th-Century Arms and Armor

Rating:
Summary: A decent overview, but...
Review: ... some of the captions are wrong. For instance: Page 116, a picture that they claim are Isreali troops firing Galil rifles -- they aren't Galils, they're Stoners. And in the "Law, Crime, and Terror" section are photos of Police Officers from the Salem Police Department -- except they're from Salem Oregon NOT Salem Massachusetts as the captions claim. Beyond the caption errors, it's a pretty good overview and introduction to modern weapons, with plenty of pictures of the weapons in use around the world and through history -- from WWI to the Persian Gulf War and modern Yugoslavia. It's not perfect, and it doesn't have a lot of technical detail -- for that, I'd suggest some of the works of Ian Hogg, Edward Ezell, and others.

Rating:
Summary: Very well written, this book has it all.
Review: If you ever wanted a book about infantry weapons of the 20th century, this is *the* book for you. It has everything, from the first world war all the way to the nineties.

Sections cover the main wars, and every main weapon of the era is extensively discussed. Great pictures (apart from one 2-page black-and-white pic where you can see the computer missing a line... :) Anyway - it has it all. even *armor*!

One bad thing: the last few chapters, about guns in the police, and sport rifles. Who needs these? I mean, the police I can understand. It's even quite interesting. But the sporting weapons are absolutely not needed in a book like this - i always skip it anyway.