The Lore of Arms: A Concise History of Weaponry, by William Reid, Facts on File Publishing, 1984, 256 pages, Hardbound, Illustrations The first thing you notice about this book, other than the bright yellow color, is its size. While a hardback, it is just slightly larger than a paperback novel and reminds me of those novelty miniture books they used to make that had had the full text of the original, but could fit in the palm of your hand. It fits easily in the back pocket of my jeans, but then again they are a might generous to be perfectly honest. Despite its diminutive size the text is of a comfortable size and the illustrations are sharp and easy to see. The book is filled with black and white line drawings and some excellent multi-color images of various types of weapons from the early stone axe to weaponry of WWII. Sadly thats about the last good thing I can say about this book. Honestly, I found reading the text a chore, and this stems from several issuses. Generally each weapon gets about 1 or 2 paragraph's which gave the material the charecter of a dictionary/encyclopedia entry rather than free flowing prose. Often I found myself wishing to know more, but frustrated as we quickly move to a new subject. Which brings up the second issue. The subject change often was quite abrupt, moving from edged weapons to long arms, to hand guns to cannon and back again within each chapter. Another problem for me was his attempt to be comepletely chronological, and since weapon development moved at different speeds across the world, so at times it felt we were moving two steps forward, one step back and a hop to the side. The greatest flaw however is what is left out. Weapons from Asia, Middle east, Near East, Africa and the native peoples of America are omitted. Navel weapons get little space and aircraft even less. How torpedo's and sea mines could be totally ignored is beyond me. Then again even land mines and Poison gas/chemical weapons are left out. Some items mearly get mentioned in passing as like the ultimate weapon in this period the Atomic Bomb. The author's only comment on it is that it is the only eapon more frightening than Hitler's "V" weapons. I have to say pass on this one. BR-XXIV
