Can I read The Social History of the Machine Gun on EtoBox?

The Social History of the Machine Gun by John Ellis; new foreword and bibliographical essay by Edward C. Ezell is a history book available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Social History of the Machine Gun about?

In this stunning account of the human impact of a single machine, John Ellis argues that the history of technology and military history are "part and parcel of social history in general." The Social History of the Machine Gun , now with a new foreword by Edward C. Ezell, provides an original and fascinating interpretation of weaponry, warfare, and society in nineteenth-and twentieth-century Europe and America. From its beginning, the machine gun threatened established assumptions about the nature of war. In spite of its highly effective use in the European colonization of Africa, the machine gun was resisted by military elites, who clung to "the old certanties of the battlefieldthe glorious change and opportunities for individual heroism." These values were carried into the trenches of World War I and swept away along with a generation of soldiers. After the war, machine guns became commercially availble in America and in many ways became a symbol of the times. Advertisements touted the Thompson submachine gun as the ideal weapon for protecting factory and farm, while "tommy guns" entered the culture's imagination with Machine Gun Kelly and Boonie and Clyde. More significantly, Ell

Who reads The Social History of the Machine Gun?

Author

John Ellis; new foreword and bibliographical essay by Edward C. Ezell

Publisher

The John Hopkins University Press

Published

1986

Language

EN

ISBN

9780801833588

Category

history

Subjects

Military, Fiction, Sociology

Rating

4.09 / 5 (97 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14