Praise:
“In a lively but chilling investigative history, British journalist Hodges examines the legacy of the ‘most ubiquitous gun in the world’…Hodges knows how to keep his thorough, eye-opening narrative moving, even as he hopscotches to nearly every conflict zone of the past 60 years…this pop-history page-turner should appeal to anyone interested in military history or international conflict.” – Publishers Weekly STARRED review
“This is a book about a contemporary phenomenon that is crucially important, utterly terrifying, and largely ignored…[it] charts the spread of the titular weapon—especially in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia—and the ways in which the gun virtually guarantees the continued implosion of failed states and the intensification of terrorist violence.” – BookForum
“Hodges’ book leaps around the world, from trouble spot to hellhole, making a compelling case for Mikhail Kalashnikov’s amazingly cheap, brutally effective and frighteningly easy to handle gun as one of history’s most destructive weapons.” – GQ (U.K.)
“The book works thanks to some spectacular reportage and because its author traces, without glorification, how the appliance of science kills human beings, building the narrative around people like those kids in sub-Saharan Africa where the AK ‘moved from being a tool of the conflict to the cause of the conflict.’” – The Guardian (U.K.)
“Hodges has written a clear-eyed and unsentimental history of the world’s most reliable and ubiquitous weapon.” – Sun Telegraph (U.K.)
AK-47: The Story of a Gun
By Michael Hodges
April 11, 2008ISBN: 978-1-59692-286-0
Format: Hardcover Genre: Nonfiction Pages: 225
Price: $24.00 Rights: U.S. Other Rights: Hodder & Stoughton U.K.
Buy this book at: BookSense.com
About the Book
A compelling account of how a simple, awkward, outdated gun has become one of the world’s most recognizable icons of revolution.
In the sixty years since General Kalashnikov created the AK47’s distinctive silhouette, the gun has been at the center of conflicts across the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. The weapon that made Kalashnikov “The Hero of the Soviet Union” has also appeared on T-shirts and vodka bottles, starred in videos and song lyrics, and been re-fashioned in crystal—a gift from Vladimir Putin to George W. Bush.
Focusing on the testimonies of the men and women who have experienced the weapon firsthand—including a Sudanese child soldier, a Vietcong veteran, and a French photographer who has documented the carnage in the West Bank—Michael Hodges’s AK47: The Story of a Gun tells the fascinating story of the world’s most ubiquitous gun, from its origins in the Soviet Union, through its rebirth in the hands of third world revolutionaries, to its current status as the brand leader in international terrorism.
About the Author
Michael Hodges was born and raised in Yorkshire. In 1982 he moved to the Middle East, where he witnessed the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and subsequent display of thousands of captured AK47s. A former PPA Magazine Writer of the Year and winner of the 2006 CRE Race in the Media Award, Hodges has reported from Russia, Palestine, and Iraq over the past six years, and came under Kalashnikov fire while patrolling with the U.S. Army in Sadr City and with the British army near Basra. He has written for the Sunday Times, the Independent, Mail on Sunday, Esquire, GQ, Marie Claire, Stuff, and Giant. His “Slice of Life” column appears every week in Time Out London.