For a book ostensibly about the AK-47, the AK-47 is by far the least interesting subject covered. Chivers taking a looking, elliptical approach to the automatic rifle, starting with the primitive Gatling guns and Maxims of the 19th century, the slaughter of the trenches in WW1, and after 3 or 4 chapters, finally into the AK-47. Mikhail Kalashnikov is painted as an enigmatic figure, a Soviet prodigy who has altered the facts of his life again and again. But what is undoubtable is that the rifle that bears his name is the most lethal instrument of the 20th century, a cheap, durable, and compact mass produced weapon that can be used equally well by conscript armies and bands of child soldiers. Chivers treats the AK-47 from a distance, taking it as the most durable part of a mostly invisible network of violence at first sponsored by states, but now completely independent of any effort to control it.

This perspective makes the book approachable for a lay-person, but also glosses over the mechanical and historical details that would be of interest to a serious student of the gun. Chivers aims for comprehensive rather than complete, and hits it, but this book just doesn't do it for me. The most interesting parts are a chapter on the early M16, and its disastrous introduction in Vietnam, and a description of a rapid firefight in Kurdistan in 2003 or so. The AK-47, the gun itself, recedes, leaving just a world of all too easy violence.