This time on “What’s Been Added to my Library of Gun Books” recently, a special all gun books edition! No diversions into subjects such as absinthe or old bibles. Just some new and new old gun books. But I am going to include a gun crankery photo.
Since this is going to be gun book heavy, I’m following my usual policy of inserting a jump so the non-book, non-gun, and non-book non-gun people can skip easily to the next post…
Handbook on Small Bore Rifle Shooting, Col. Townsend Whelen. Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute, New York, 1947. Riling 2210. Also in Biscotti.
Per Riling, this was first published by SAAMI in 1936 under the title Small Bore Rifle Handbook, revised in 1937, and the title changed in 1938. This is the eleventh edition per the inside matter, with a “total printing to date 300,000”. From what I’ve read elsewhere, small bore rifle shooting became a big thing during the depression and continued on post-war. Small bore shooting was cheaper and required less land than centerfire/high-power shooting.
I’ve written before about Townsend Whelen, so no need to recap here. Found a copy of this one from a vendor on ABEBooks for $12.50 (plus $6 shipping). Which is about 4.5 times what I paid for Handbook on Shotgun Shooting, but I’m not complaining. This is another “pretty nice shape for a 78 year old pamphlet” purchase, and Jim Hodgson Books was a pleasure to deal with.
These pages amused me, for obvious reasons:
America’s Right Arm: The Smith & Wesson Military and Police Revolver, John Henwood. Published by the author, 1997.
The most expensive gun book I have purchased so far. (Hi, Lawrence!) It was so expensive that I’m kind of embarrassed to admit how much I paid for a softcover book. $276.03 with shipping from Kisselburg Military Books. (I mentioned thinking about paying $300 for a gun book a while back. It was this book.)
To be honest, I had a little extra jingle in my jeans, this is about the going rate on ABEBooks, this copy is pretty much “new” (except for a very small tear in the lower right corner of the spine, and that was probably my doing due to clumsy handling), and America’s Right Arm is a massively important book for S&W collectors.
The Military and Police Revolver (which became known as the “Model 10” when S&W changed to model numbers instead of names) is the iconic American revolver. If you ask people to picture a revolver, they will probably think of either the M&P or some sort of Colt. To provide a source for my point, here’s IMFDB’s page on the Model 10, with all the movies they’ve documented it appearing in. (“The Astro-Zombies”?) It was a very very common police gun before the transition to semi-automatic pistols.
And they still make it. As a matter of fact, S&W just introduced a new version without the internal lock.
My Model 10s, let me show them to you.
The one in front is a post-WWII M&P shipped in October 1947. The one in back is a heavy-barreled Model 10-14: I think this is a police trade-in, but I do not have a shipping date or factory letter on it,
Mr. Henwood’s book is a history of the M&P revolver from introduction (approximately 1899: yes, they’ve been making these for over 100 years) to publication of this book. It is a hugely important book for S&W collectors. It also had a very limited print run, since it was self-published. I understand the first printing was only 500 copies: this is a second printing, and I don’t know how many were in that run.
Isn’t that a great cover? And speaking of great covers…
Hunting with the Twenty-Two, C.S. Landis. Small Arms Technical Publishing Company, Georgetown, SC, 1950. Riling 2727. Also in Biscotti.
Seriously, this is another Gayle Hoskins jacket for another C.S. Landis book from Samworth, and I would not mind having a framed print on my wall. (It wasn’t one of the prints they sold.) Smith says there was only one printing of this, and the ad page is dated September 1950, which is consistent. (SATPC published their final book in 1954.)
In spite of the title, this does not just cover .22 rimfires: there are also chapters on the .22 Hornet, but there is plenty of .22 LR material. I think slightly less than half the chapters are written by guest writers such as Henry E. Davis and “C.S. Landis, Jr.” There’s a chapter on “Elevation Readings for the .22 Long Rifle Cartridge – 50 to 300 Yards”. The data is probably useless today, since loads have changed, but I’m looking forward to reading that. (Landis used a Winchester Model 52 for his testing.)
I’d call this “very good”. There’s some wear to the top front of the jacket, and a smaller amount to the bottom front. Also small amounts of wear to the top and bottom of the spine, but I don’t see any to the rear of the book. $90 plus tax and shipping (total $103.92) from NorthStar Books on ABE.
(I need to get in touch with the Delaware Historical Society and see if they can help me find biographical information on C.S. Landis.)
Britain’s L42A1: King of the Enfield Sniper Rifles, Jeff John. Art in Arms Press, no city, 2019.
The Matchless Enfield .303 No. 4 MK I (T) Sniper: And Britain’s Elite Force of Scout/Snipers Who Dominated WWII Battlefields, Jeff John. Art in Arms Press, no city, 2019.
These two are new books you can from Amazon. The L42A1 book popped up in my recommendations, and (as everyone knows) I’m interested in sniping, so…once I bought that, the No. 4 MK I book popped up, and, well, I had to order that. If for no other reason than to dive deeper into the mythology of the No. 4 MK I (T) with the No. 32 telescopic sight. They’re not that expensive for sniping books ($20 for the No. 4 book, $29 for the L42A1).
I have not read these yet, but they look interesting. Mr. John has an impressive resume (editor for Guns, etc.) and it looks like there is a lot of nice photography in both books (much of it also by Mr. John, according to the front matter).