Revolver

March 16, 2020
Historian Rasenberger (The Brilliant Disaster) chronicles the life and times of gunmaker Samuel Colt (1814–1862) in this colorful and richly digressive biography. Born in Hartford, Conn., Colt sailed to Calcutta on a merchant ship at age 16, and, according to the “central creation myth” of the Colt revolver, drew inspiration from the ship’s capstan to carve a wooden model of a gun that could shoot multiple bullets without having to be reloaded. (His critics later claimed that he’d stolen the “rotating cylinder” concept from a pistol used by British soldiers in India.) Following his return to America in 1831, Colt traveled the country selling “hits of nitrous oxide” to fund development of his invention, paid for friendly press, and competed in gun trials held by the U.S. Ordnance Department. He met with little success until the Mexican-American War and westward expansion spiked demand for firearms. Rasenberger notes the influence of Colt’s mass production techniques on the automobile industry, and describes how “tens of thousands of guns” produced during the Civil War “enabled dark tendencies in the postwar nation.” Secondary figures, including Colt’s brother John, whose murder conviction inspired an Edgar Allan Poe story, are sketched with wit and precision. This rollicking and informative account will delight American history buffs.

March 15, 2020
Vigorous life of Samuel Colt (1814-1862), the renowned and controversial inventor of the pistol that bears his name today. Colt was a young teenager when he shipped out to sea, where he had one of those lightbulb moments--or would have, if there had been lightbulbs in 1831. He probably owed it to something he'd seen in a market in India, but there it was: a model he'd carved of a pistol that, unlike the single-load models of the day, had a "fist-shaped bulge above the trigger" inside of which could be found the solution to a nagging technological problem: how to fire several bullets without reloading. With Colt's invention, by popular historian and journalist Rasenberger's account, two great forces met, one economic and the other demographic. Here was an invention more important than the mechanical reaper or cotton gin, one that, with all its murderous possibilities, gave specific force to Manifest Destiny and the conquest of the continent. Colt seems to have had some inkling of all this since he fought relentlessly to preserve his patents, including using a pioneering campaign of lobbying "where congressmen were wined and dined and flirted with by attractive women who, sooner or later, whispered into their ears about the benefits of Colt's patent extension." Himself a carouser of indifferent morals, Colt made and lost a fortune or two over the years. He died near the beginning of the Civil War, in which his "revolver was a sideshow...a desirable but inessential accoutrement carried by officers and cavalry"--but especially by guerrillas such as Quantrill's Raiders and the gang of the Confederate bushwhacker Bloody Bill Anderson, who used Colt's invention to slaughter Union troops equipped with single-shot muskets. As Rasenberger notes in conclusion, knowing all this about Colt won't change anyone's mind about guns, but his useful study certainly lends depth to the ongoing debate about them. A solid blend of technological, economic, social, and popular history.

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April 15, 2020
A ubiquitous symbol of the American West, whether carried by lawman, cowboy, cavalryman, Texas Ranger, outlaw, showman, or pioneer, is the Colt pistol. Produced by inventor and industrialist Samuel Colt, the first widely available multi-shot firearm enabled settlers in the region to defend themselves in a dangerous world, but it also, in the wrong hands, made possible horrific cruelty and violence. Rasenberger (The Brilliant Disaster, 2011) deftly brings to life the man and his times in this gripping biography that does admirable work updating scholarship about Colt. A derivative of the word revolver is also key to the story as Rasenberger covers the many revolutions in nineteenth-century America, from factories and changing business practices to Manifest Destiny and the battles that led to conquest from sea to shining sea to lobbying the government for contracts and patent protections. Rasenberger presents evidence documenting Colt's many trespasses against Victorian morality; indeed, Colt clearly led a wild life. The result is a very lively and informative book for every reader interested in American history and all of the nation's flaws and virtues.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)