MWSA Book Review

AK-47: The Weapon That Changed The Face Of War

Authors: Larry Kahaner

Publisher:  Wiley

Reviewer: Bill McDonald – President of the MWSA

Intriguing History of a Gun, its Inventor and its Impact on the World!

The book “AK-47: The Weapon That Changed The Face Of War” is a great reading experience even if you do not care a wit about guns or weapons. I thought this was going to be a book about a gun – which it is – but it is so much more than that. Author Larry Kahaner has put together a history book that puts into focus the impact and the importance of this single invention of destruction. The Ak-47 has killed more people than the Atomic bombs we dropped on Japan. It has changed the face of the geo-political world like no other weapon has ever done before.

The book is as much fun to read as a novel. Kahaner crafts a well told story using both history and people to weave a portrait of how this automatic rifle has spread around the world from conflicts in Africa and Asia to South America. I think any soldier who has fought in a conflict in the last 60 years has come up against this weapon or have used it themselves. I was one of those who were assaulted in Vietnam by AK-47 welding VC and NVA. I will always remember the distinct sound that they made when they were fired at you. I used my M-16 rifle for the first time in combat after my Huey crashed. I shouldered my rifle to return fire while extracting the crew from our downed aircraft; it only fired one round before jamming up. That was a horrible feeling to have a weapon that would not work in the dirt and mud of Vietnam. However, that was not the problem of the well designed AK-47, as I would discover personally during my tour of duty there.

The author shares a little background on the inventor of the rifle, Mikhail Kalashnikov. We discover that he never made anything off his invention and ends up making money off his endorsement of vodka. The official name of the rifle is Automatic Kalashnikov – 1947. Thus the shortened name AK- 47. Kalashnikov regrets that his weapon has been used by terrorist organizations world wide. His intentions were to build an easy to use cheap weapon to protect his country from the Nazis. He succeed in building a rifle that could withstand the elements in the jungles, the deserts and in the rice paddies.

I honestly enjoyed reading this book and found it held my interest from beginning to end. I had previously never read any book or even a magazine article about any gun or weapon before, so this was an eye-opening look at a world that I had not explored. The author treats the subject with respect. His research is first class and appears to be deep. We find ourselves riveted to the tale he unfolds about how these rifles were spread around the globe by even our own CIA. There are now over 100 million of these cheap to make and easy to use rifles out there in use in places like Somalia, the Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Peru, Columbia, El Salvador, Vietnam, North Korea and many more countries. It is being used to fight revolutions, uprisings, drug wars, assignations and carry out terror. It has become the weapon of choice.

This book is a must read for people who enjoy military genre books but it is also a good education for non-combatants who just want a better understanding of what is happening in the world today.

The MWSA gives this book its top book rating of FIVE STARS!