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Rating: 
Summary: A Wonderful Book About a Beautiful Rifle.
Review: Between the covers of "The Classic M1 Garand" by Jim Thompson, lies the intertwined stories of many whose lives have been touched by the legacy of this beautiful rifle. The opening pages tell the sensitive, true story of two men touched by time and linked by family, who had lived through two different wars. They grew to discover another thing which they had in common was their respect for the M1 Garand, a weapon that for each of them served to retain the memories of a time and place too horrible to remember...... and too much a part of what they were as men, to forget.
I am not a gun collector or a shooter. I am merely a woman who has had the incredible luck to browse through this excellently composed book which is full of history. The descriptions of the birth and re birth of the M1 are perfect in their detail and interesting in that the author weaves anecdotes and personal stories into the factual data. This is a wonderful way to keep the reader's attention riveted. It is apparant that this weapon has been around the world in it's various incarnations, each of them given ample space for photographs and exacting descriptions. And , speaking of photographs, this book is full of them. Many more so than I would have thought to find. There are photos of the various parts, markings and accessories to the gun and many pictures dedicated to the beauty of the rifle itself. Believe me, it is a wonderful machine with it's clean lines and spare design. Gorgeous wood and shining metal. This M1 Garand is a beautiful piece of art. It is no wonder that the M1 Garand is sought after by collectors the world over! The author, Jim Thompson, is credited with several of the photographs and appears in some as well. He is as capable an artist with the camera as he is with the pen. I enjoyed reading and looking through "The Classic M1 Garand", and will keep it visible to all who come to my home. It has become my newest and most treasured coffee table book. Thank you Mr. Thompson. Please write more books......for a long time to come.
Rating:
Summary: rifles and reality
Review: Most firearms writing is bland and dull, and shows almost total ignorance of both the infantryman and conditions in the countries where the weapons are used and/or produced. This writer puts hardware in a real contexts that make sense, thumbs his literary nose at half-baked conspiracy theories and fools who muddle in the dark, and does hard research with the materials themselves. He obviously loves his family, his country, his friends, and the M1 Garand... But he is hardnosed about reality, from top to bottom, and uses the photos and the facts better than I have ever seen in gun books.
The trigger job I tried, and it worked, and it was easy. The maintenance suggestions improved my shooting and reduced wear on my rifle. And this was measurable. I think a lot of gun writers never shoot. This man does. And he is very careful, urges you to be the same.
I have both his M1 books and his Machine Gun book. He is thorough, without being tedious, and there are lines in here that will make the reader laugh. And cry, perhaps.
His barrel tests are practical, and I decided to try the products he tested in .308. He tells the Italian M1 story better than anyone. And the photos he uses look like the REAL articles, not white-filled and polished parts which never resemble anything one can actually use or get.
Thompson is a worker with a bent toward humor and scholarship.
I especially like how he presented, "with many grains of salt", the serial number/date charts that so many collectors treat with way too much reverence.
His books are not the most scholarly in the field, though his research is better than average, far better than in most "smallish" M1 volumes. They are, however, the best and the most practical, and the best written and easiest to use and understand, in the entire field. This stuff is inspirational, but still "lunch bucket"...
If Thompson ranges wide, he does so to illustrate points which have escaped others, and which are startlingly relevant. This is particularly wise in the case of the Garand, which was in its time the most respected and one of the most ubiquitous rifles in the world. His factual and well-documented rifle
procedures are worth the price, all by themselves.
Rating:
Summary: Save money, trouble, aggravations
Review: The COMPLETE M1 GARAND and THE CLASSIC M1 GARAND are a pair of the most practical and straightforward firearms books I have ever read or seen. Most important, they saved me money, trouble, and thumbs. This writer does not fool around! Rather than elaborate charts of which 99% are useless to the typical gunnie, this guy gets to the meat, and in a hurry. And yet, the material is easy to handle. He even covers and shows fake and real and rare and common parts, the way they ACTUALLY look, instead of all fancified and restored. I had lots of trouble with other books, where the parts arrays were new or better-than-new, and didn't seem even similar to mine. I invested, I think, %45.00 in these books. Dollarwise, I have saved maybe $2000 or more, and a lot of problems. This guy knows the gun, knows the market, knows the parts, and tells you what you need to know, in practical, plain English, not mumbo-jumbo garbage. I got all the M1 books. This one is the easiest to use, and makes more sense than all the others together.
Rating:
Summary: Best and the easiest to read and understand
Review: These are the best of the M1 books, the easiest to read and
understand, with the detail laid out in a way that anybody can
understand. And the guns he shows look like the real thing. The notes on the gun confiscation movement and local politics bring this World War II veteran rifle into modern context, and make it very obvious what the motiviations of the antigunners really are. Scholarly without being pretentious, I found myself absorbing techniques and information without even noticing it.
And I did most of his maintenance stuff, and it all worked. With the trouble shooting information in Thompson's other book, THE COMPLETE M1 GARAND, the books have saved me thousands of dollars and lots of hours. He goes beyond other researchers, who seem to dig up all their stuff at the armories, the factories, and from dry delivery records, and who pay no attention to the reports of veterans and actual units in the field. This makes his work very practical. He also puts holes in some of the "stand operating b.s." and lies of the past, which someone out there is surely going to find troubling, but what he says, I found out, works, makes sense, and is the truth. He has spent a lot of time getting this stuff from gunsmiths and armorers, and a lot of it I had heard previously but discarded because it wasn't in the dry books of other authors. It seems he is right on virtually every score, and much of the "official" stuff is smokescreen. My gunsmith (who built M1's during World War II, and wound up carrying one in Korea) loves the M1, and says Thompson obviously listened to "the right guys"... He also affirms Thompson's data and analysis of the gas traps and their performance, and that everything else in the book is obviously the way it really was.
Rating:
Summary: Best and the easiest to read and understand
Review: These are the best of the M1 books, the easiest to read and
understand, with the detail laid out in a way that anybody can
understand. And the guns he shows look like the real thing. The notes on the gun confiscation movement and local politics bring this World War II veteran rifle into modern context, and make it very obvious what the motiviations of the antigunners really are. Scholarly without being pretentious, I found myself absorbing techniques and information without even noticing it.
And I did most of his maintenance stuff, and it all worked. With the trouble shooting information in Thompson's other book, THE COMPLETE M1 GARAND, the books have saved me thousands of dollars and lots of hours. He goes beyond other researchers, who seem to dig up all their stuff at the armories, the factories, and from dry delivery records, and who pay no attention to the reports of veterans and actual units in the field. This makes his work very practical. He also puts holes in some of the "stand operating b.s." and lies of the past, which someone out there is surely going to find troubling, but what he says, I found out, works, makes sense, and is the truth. He has spent a lot of time getting this stuff from gunsmiths and armorers, and a lot of it I had heard previously but discarded because it wasn't in the dry books of other authors. It seems he is right on virtually every score, and much of the "official" stuff is smokescreen. My gunsmith (who built M1's during World War II, and wound up carrying one in Korea) loves the M1, and says Thompson obviously listened to "the right guys"... He also affirms Thompson's data and analysis of the gas traps and their performance, and that everything else in the book is obviously the way it really was.
Rating:
Summary: Way better than most of the others...
Review: These books are way better than Canfield's, and
have way less errors. And they include the Italian
rifles and the ones a guy is likely to actually GET,
too, and in MUCH MORE detail.
Rating:
Summary: Way better than most of the others...
Review: These books are way better than Canfield's, and
have way less errors. And they include the Italian
rifles and the ones a guy is likely to actually GET,
too, and in MUCH MORE detail.
Rating: 
Summary: Classic ? Hardly............
Review: While the M1 Garand is certainly a classic american rifle this book hardly rates in the same catagory. As a new M1 owner I was looking for a book full of technical information on operation and maintenance along with some history. This book is short on all of the above but very long on attitude. Mr. Thompson makes his opinions clear on everything from his local police department to the general state of world affairs. I do not dispute the validity, or factuality, of Mr. Thompsons statements. I would be more than willing to sit down and discuss them. I do not, however, enjoy spending my hard earned money on a book entitled "The Classic M1 Garand" which is overly rife with page upon page of geo-political posturing. The book is actually pretty scant on technical data and most of the photos are too dark and unfocused to be of any real value. This book is simply too full of useless information. I had intended to purchase Mr. Thompsons previous book, The Complete M1 Garand. Since I don't believe in throwing good money after bad I think I'll pass. I suggest that you do the same.
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