Recommended reading on gun history?

[appaws]

Hi everyone.  After listening to the podcast, especially Mr. Ayoobs amazing histories of the topics being discussed, I am hungry for some reading about the history of firearms.  (And I have Christmas gift cards to use!)

I am a history PhD student, so I think of things in terms of reading lists, can anyone give me any recommendations for a reading list on the General history of firearms?

[Miggy]

You best bet would be to go to Amazon and search for History of Firearms. You'll get plenty of hits. Also you can do a company by company search in amazon or by type of weapon (Mauser, Smith and Wesson, AK, etc.) There is plenty out there and I think few books would be bad. 

[Mark Vanderberg]

FREE on Google Book Search
http://books.google.com/books?id=TYlCAAAAIAAJ

Firearms in American History
By Charles Winthrop Sawyer
Published by The author, 1920
Item notes: v. 3
Original from the University of California
Digitized Oct 16, 2007
237 pages

[Mark Vanderberg]

World's best automatic weapons
http://books.google.com/books?id=cycDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA124&dq=John+M.+Browning&as_brr=1
   
Description of the Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, Model of 1911:
http://books.google.com/books?id=hs9BAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=M1911+pistol&as_brr=1

[Chemsoldier]

Sometimes the best way to study an inanimate object are to study its users.

"Guns, Bullets and Gunfighting" by Jim Cirillo
"Hell, I was There!" by Elmer Keith
Books by Jeff Cooper, Bill Jordan, Elmer Keith, John Taffin, etc.

Magazine articles, books sections and interviews with said types of people.

As a historian concentrate on who knows who, who was teaching what, what competitions were big, what relationships were going on between companies.

I have read some histories of weapons.  With the exception of Ian Hogg and a few others they tend to be stilted works written by non-shooters and sometimes by non-historians.

Unless someone knows something I dont, I am not aware of a trained historian producing a serious historical work utilizing primary sources on shooters or the shooting community.  If they did it hasnt been published.