The gunning of America Business and the making of American gun culture

Review by Choice Review

The Winchester rifle and Colt .45 are iconic, part of the US obsession with guns extending from the American Revolution. Historian Haag offers a provocative argument about the development of this gun culture. She effectively contends that it emerged in the 19th and early 20th centuries as a result of mass production techniques that required creative marketing to sell guns, which were perceived as an unexceptional commodity and similar to any other mass-produced item. Selling guns was unremarkable and simply a business decision to create a commercial market. Drawing upon extensive archival research, especially in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company records, Haag carefully depicts founder Oliver Winchester's extensive efforts to sell guns and create new markets in the US when international sales declined. Other gun manufacturers, such as Colt and Remington, followed suit. Haag argues that Winchester was quiet on the social consequences of gun sales; however, Sarah Winchester, Oliver's daughter-in-law and eventual principal stockholder, developed a moral conscience that drove her to a reclusive life in an architectural riddle labeled Mystery House in Santa Clara, CA. Despite profits from meeting military needs during WW I, over-expansion and indebtedness hurt the industry and led to a nationwide marketing campaign to create demand for guns. This book must be read. Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries. --Raymond M. Hyser, James Madison University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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Review by Booklist Review

Haag, an award-winning historian and essayist, has turned a wide and deep lens to America's gun culture, focusing on it as an unexceptional commodity in our business history. We thus see it not as a matter of values of gun owners but of the makers, and triumph of nineteenth-century manufacturing and mechanical elegance. The central focus is on Oliver Winchester, who moved from shirt manufacturing before the Civil War to establishing interchangeability in mass-production lines for the self-repeating rifles of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Haag traces the business' story in the U.S. and the role of government forward into the military carnage of the twentieth century and today's civilian market. But she also develops a parallel track the effect of the vast Winchester-family wealth, provided by guns, on the conscience of Sarah, Oliver's daughter-in-law. It eventually led to massive extravagance, spiritualism, and mental imbalance. The author has smoothly brought together a huge amount of archival research, wide historical sources, and contemporary perspectives as recent as 2015. This book should attract many readers.--Meyers, Arthur Copyright 2016 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this fascinating account, Haag (Marriage Confidential) traces the history of America's gun-making business, arguing that "the tragedy of American gun violence emerged from the banality of the American gun business." Oliver Winchester, known as "the rifle king," who founded one of the first private armories in America in early 19th century, is the focal point of the narrative. As Haag notes, former clothier Winchester could just as easily have been remembered as the country's "men's shirt king." The gun industry began with the colonial rebels' need for more uniform weapons whose parts could be exchanged in the midst of battle. But reliance on government contracts during wartime proved an unreliable business model, forcing manufacturers to seek out other markets for the prodigious potential output of their military-scale factories. They began aggressive ad campaigns aimed to convince ordinary citizens that guns were something they needed to own. Haag offers some practical suggestions for curbing gun violence that involve treating weapons as a consumer product that should be regulated-noting the anomaly that toy guns are subject to safety regulations, while real guns are not. Both convincingly argued and eminently readable, Haag's book will intrigue readers on all sides of the gun control debate. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Review by Library Journal Review

Historian Haag (Marriage Confidential) powerfully protests the conventional notion of America's gun culture from the perspective of business, history, and human conscience, arguing that the modern firearm did not originate as an exceptional item or emotionally charged totem. The author emphatically rejects the idea that such a culture was forged out of the legacy of Daniel Boone, Revolutionary War patriots, the expansion of the Western frontier, the Second Amendment, or "American Individualism." Instead, the gun emerged as an ordinary 19th-century product that companies such as Winchester Repeating Arms or Remington Arms produced, marketed, and sold no differently than a plow or hammer. Focusing on Oliver Winchester and Co., Haag describes how gun sales were critical to the success of the business. To stimulate profits before World War I, manufacturers exaggerated the weapon's role to appeal to nonrural America; one that lamented the disappearance of an earlier mythical, romanticized, individualistic, and masculine landscape. Haag strongly believes that merchandise (especially guns) carries the burden of right and wrong, as exemplified in the tragic life of Sarah Winchester, heir to the Winchester fortune. VERDICT This important book speaks directly to the ideas that underpin the strident political debate on guns today. It will appeal to anyone interested in American history, business history, or modern politics.-Mark Jones, -Mercantile Lib., Cincinnati © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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