Parker Guns: The Old Reliable

Rating:
Summary: A beautiful collection of photos,& text. The best yet!
Review: Ed Muderlak has produced a book destined to be the authority on Parker shotguns for generations. The research was completed by the author rather than gathering bits and pieces from other publications and the presentation is excellant. The author is a noted collector of vintage Parkers and writes the book in that flavor. He is not terribly impressed with Parker Reproductions or reworked and refurbished guns, so if you are a "Repro" collector, don't expect to find anything here. A quality publication with excellant detailed color photos and reproduced B&W Parker advertizing. If R.L.Wilson was to publish a Parker book, it would look alot like this. A must have for Parker fans!

Rating:
Summary: nicely done
Review: Mr. Muderlake appears to be a bit more literate than most gun writers (McIntosh excepted), and the book is pleasantly done. Also
the photographs are nicely reproduced. It certainly is a better book than the things currently available on some other supposedly classic shotguns like Winchester and Browning. One thing Muderlake does not do (nor do any other gun writers), is give any convincing explanation as to why so many people think the Parkers were the last word in shotgunning. I've never understood it except to think that since people had to pay more for Parkers than for equivalent grade Foxes or Ithacas, they had to think they had something special...perhaps in the end, this is something impenetrable in me.

One slightly sour, continuing note in the book is that Mr. Muderlake appears to think that scholarship is a competitive sport. Even though he pays lip service to the idea of valuing past writers' work, he several times fairly shouts, "Look at me, I've proved Him (whoever) wrong!" In the world of scholarship there are ways and ways of doing this, and Muderlake's smugness leaves an unpleasant aftertaste.