Small Arms Visual Encyclopedia

by Martin J. Dougherty

From the very first handguns of the fifteenth century to modern machine guns and rifles, Small Arms Visual Encyclopedia is a highly illustrated volume that examines all the significant small arms of the world, featuring more than 1000 of the world’s handguns, assault rifles, shotguns, machine guns, and other more esoteric weapons. All the famous weapons of each type are featured, such as the M-16, Colt .44 Magnum and MG42. Each featured small arm is illustrated with an excellent full-color artwork, showing the weapon in great detail with full specifications tables that list country of origin, weights, dimensions and calibre (with all weights and measures provided in both metric and imperial). With more than 800 outstanding color artworks, Small Arms Visual Encyclopedia is a comprehensive and accessible reference work that will appeal to anyone with an interest in small arms.

Genres: Reference

Paperback

First published September 1, 2011

About the author

Hailing from northeast England, Martin J Dougherty is a professional writer specialising in military history. He has been at times a games designer, an engineer, a self-protection instructor, a teacher and a defence analyst. Martin has published a range of books covering topics as diverse as self-protection, medieval warfare and space flight, and has addressed international conferences on anti-shipping missiles and homeland security issues.

Martin's interests include martial arts and fencing. He has coached Fencing, Ju-Jitsu, Self-Defence and Kickboxing for many years at the University of Sunderland, and has competed to national level as a fencer. As a martial artist he holds black belts in Combat Ju-Jitsu, Nihon Tai-Jitsu and Self-Defence. Martin is a Senior Assessor with the Self-Defence Federation and an IL1 instructor/assessor with the Britsh Federation for Historical Swordplay, specialising in the Military Sabre and the Smallsword.

Reviews

[Lou Regiet]

I want the read

[Guylaen O'Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have fired A LOT of weapons systems in my time in the military. I am dead set against the second amendment for the obvious reason that I know what weapons can do, but I appreciate the craftsmanship of a weapon nonetheless.

AS A FICTION WRITER this book is an absolute ESSENTIAL REFERENCE BOOK. You will find yourself flipping through to a period in history that you're writing about, and wondering what sort of weapons that they might be carrying around. To ground yourself in as much realism as possible, get ahold of this book, and use it as a guide.

If you can, try to fire the weapon at a range at least once, so you can get an empathetic understanding of the character's duty in lugging the thing around.

[Anthony Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the Thompson submachine gun

[Kevindex · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really gave me new information about different types of guns. Some I might have known about but there were allot I did not know about to. I recommend this book to any one who has any interest in guns.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This work contains brief descriptions of handguns and long guns of the world along with colored drawings or photos. These firearms are broken down by time periods. A good firearms reference.

[Dylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very useful for a visualization of the weapons with little blurbs of information for a quick knowledge on the weapon. It does well on covering a large range of small arms over the years.