Cheap Grim Reaper: Machine-Guns and Machine-Gunners in Action (Book) (Roger Ford) Price

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Customer Reviews of Grim Reaper: Machine-Guns and Machine-Gunners in Action

As a reader well versed in military history, the chapters relating to the competitive development of the Maxim
and Gatling were truly news to me, as was the impact of the Maxim on European colonialism. The author's treatment of the evolution of tactical employment of the weapon is also very interesting and informative. This is a must read for anyone interested 20th century military history.

A remarkable introduction to machine guns history
This book is not (yet another) thick reference guide to machine-guns. Instead it is a remarkably comprehensive yet concise introduction to the history of machine gun development, production and usage from the earliest manual guns of the American Civil War to the sophistication of equipment in service of modern armies. Ford's favourite "pet" period is the 1900s-1950s era - a classic period in the refinement and perfection of recoil-operated machine guns (the "fifty-cal" Browning M2 circa 1928 is still in use throughout the world).

From my humble perspective, the author is particularly successful in his bid to follow four separate aspects of machine-gun's history:

- technological advances
- production and logistics
- tactical usage and strategic impact
- "human factor"

Most other books on the subject tend to select only one of those and discuss it at length. Ford's aim is much broader. He successfully manages to carry out those separate threads of argument at once. All four are seamlessly threaded into a single narration. It is a pleasure to see as complicated yet orderly mosaic of dependencies emerges. Suddenly lots of old historical facts start to make much more sense and cease being "strange things old generations did". You could see how human ingenuity, incompetence, politics and greed on one side and weather and mud on the other shaped machine-guns as we know them today.

Throughout the narration, the author keeps precise balance between excellent readability and technical meticulousness. He never drools in extreme dry technicalities. On the other hand, quoted contemporary accounts are concise and well chosen to emphasize important technical or tactical arguments, not just fill the pages with military glamour or gore of warfare. Descriptions of selected important models are skilfully incorporated into narration. The performance details given are carefully constrained to important bits, so text does not deteriorate into a comprehensive yet boring enumeration of numbers and hardware components, the flaw many of Christopher Chant's books (for example) suffer from.

By its very nature, such book cannot be encyclopaedic and include everything. Nevertheless, by putting particular machine-guns into historical context, it inspires reader to get back to related works and browse through them with a new interest. I quite recommend reading this book alongside some nice and heavy reference encyclopaedia of small arms. You will get lots of unexpected fun.

Perhaps I should explain why I haven't given this book full 5 stars:

This book only major drawback is utter and complete absence of drawings and/or action diagrams. Ford does a remarkable job of explaining the mechanism of action of particular guns and interesting technical arrangements using text only. However remarkable his control of language might be - such descriptions are sometimes hard to follow. For the person new to the subject this could be annoying and somewhat diminish the pleasure of an otherwise excellent book.

Same applies to photographs which are few, poorly chosen and often placed out of context.

Saying that - the text alone is brilliant. The book is worth buying just for the sheer reading pleasure sake.

One of the Best MG books.
The Grim Reaper is an excellent machine gun book, and like some other people, I read it cover-to-cover in about four days. There are 22 pictures in all, and yes, there could have been more. Other than that, the text is easy to understand and it is very informative. The book starts with the beginning of the machine gun and ends with modern machine guns. The book described several military engagements with detail. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in machine guns or firearms in general.