Horizon Information Portal

HSPLS site

eBooks/Audiobooks

Reading Program

The gunning of America [electronic resource] : business and the making of American gun culture / Pamela Haag.

by Haag, Pamela, author.

[Ashland, Oregon] : Blackstone Audio, Inc., p2016.

Firearms -- Social aspects -- United States -- History.

Firearms industry and trade -- United States -- History.

Capitalism -- United States -- History.

United States -- Social conditions.

United States -- Economic conditions.

Electronic Resource

http://hawaii.lib.overdrive.com/ContentDetails.htm?ID=2142B0C4-658B-4755-9A72-19862246F029 This title is available online; click here to access

Electronic Resource

http://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-425/0887-1/2550037-TheGunningOfAmerica.mp3

Electronic Resource

http://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=2142b0c4-658b-4755-9a72-19862246f029&.epub-sample.overdrive.com

Electronic Resource

http://images.contentreserve.com/ImageType-100/0887-1/{2142B0C4-658B-4755-9A72-19862246F029}Img100.jpg

9781504710794 electronic audio bk.

1504710797 electronic audio bk.

1 online resource (1 sound file (16 hr., 28 min., 19 sec.))

Americans have always loved guns. This special bond was forged during the American Revolution and sanctified by the Second Amendment. It is because of this exceptional relationship that American civilians are more heavily armed than the citizens of any other nation. Or so we're told.In The Gunning of America, historian Pamela Haag overturns this conventional wisdom. American gun culture, she argues, developed not because the gun was exceptional but precisely because it was not: guns proliferated in America because throughout most of the nation's history they were perceived as an unexceptional commodity, no different than buttons or typewriters.Focusing on the history of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, one of the most iconic arms manufacturers in America, Haag challenges many basic assumptions of how and when America became a gun culture. Under the leadership of Oliver Winchester and his heirs, the company used aggressive, sometimes ingenious, sales and marketing techniques to create new markets for their product. Guns have never "sold themselves"; rather, through advertising and innovative distribution campaigns, the gun industry did. Through the meticulous examination of gun-industry archives, Haag challenges the myth of a primal bond between Americans and their firearms. Over the course of its 150-year history, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company sold over eight million guns. But Oliver Winchester--a shirtmaker in his previous career--had no apparent qualms about a life spent arming America. His daughter-in-law Sarah Winchester was a different story. Legend holds that Sarah was haunted by what she considered a vast blood fortune, and became convinced that the ghosts of rifle victims were haunting her.In this provocative and deeply researched work of narrative history, Haag fundamentally revises the history of arms in America and, in so doing, explodes the clichés that have created and sustained our lethal gun culture.

Horizon Information Portal 3.25_9884

Powered by Dynix

© 2001-2013 SirsiDynix All rights reserved.

Horizon Information Portal