$4.46
Details
Samuel Colt: The Life and Legacy of the Man Who Invented America’s Most Famous Guns
Author: Charles River Editors
Narrator: Bill Hare
Unabridged: 1 hr 16 min
Format: Digital Audiobook
Publisher: Findaway Voices
Published: 06/24/2019
Synopsis
By the time weapons industrialist Samuel Colt was born, the Lewis and Clark Expedition sent to the Pacific by Thomas Jefferson had only recently returned with their report on the first overland continental journey. Outside of a small group of mountain men trapping and trading fur for European fashion magnates, few white settlers had found their way across the Great Plains. The firearms of the Revolution demonstrated little difference between a soldier’s flintlock musket and a hunting weapon taken from the mantle.
Trapped in the same technological rut as future wars drew near in the new century, Samuel Colt entered the pool of visionaries in search of the invention that would tip the power balance in favor of those who possessed it. As an observant child of the Industrial Revolution, Colt would ultimately lead the way with the most defining design changes in weaponry, and through constant trial and error, he gave the military what it wanted despite fierce resistance and apathy: an answer to the reloading conundrum. The half-minute intervals in which soldiers, lawmen, and hunters were at their most vulnerable was effectively eliminated after centuries of resignation, and the ensuing refinements to his handguns in particular were crucial to the outcomes of multiple wars, the American expansion west, and cowboy life along the frontier. With a mixture of perseverance, audacity, sales charm, and the curiosity of an engineer, Colt remains the most well-known manufacturer of arms in the nation’s history, and the ongoing argument as to whether Colt was in the end more of an innovator than inventor is rendered mute by reality. The evolutionary leap of his designs and ensuing products affected the balance of power in conflicts around the world, so much so that according to arms historian James E. Serven, they “shaped the destiny of American firearms” and helped the embryonic United States deal with both external and domestic violence.
by David Crockett
The subject of stage plays, books, movies and one of the most popular television series of all time (with a theme song that millions of Americans can instantly sing along with from the very first word), he really was the King of the Wild Frontier. A...
Published: 01/28/2023
by John Lang
Captain James Cook FRS RN (1728-1779) was an English explorer, navigator and cartographer, ultimately rising to the rank of Captain in the Royal Navy. Cook was the first to map Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean during w...
Published: 07/01/2012
by Janet Benge
As Sundar preached the gospel to the crowd, the monastery guard marched forward and arrested him. Sundar was dragged to the edge of town and hurled to the bottom of an abandoned well. The air was putrid. Desperation and loneliness soon washed over h...
Published: 02/09/2016
by Elizabeth Keckley
An autobiographical narrative, Behind the Scenes in the Lincoln White House traces Elizabeth Keckley's life from her enslavement in Virginia and North Carolina to her time as seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln in the White House during Abraham Lincoln'...
Published: 02/20/2014
by Anne Frank
Anne Frank, it has been said, gave a face and a name to the horror of the Holocaust. This is her story. It relates how Anne, her family, and their friends hid in secret rooms—"the Annex"—in an Amsterdam warehouse for 25 months. Anne, jus...
Published: 01/01/2018
by David A. Bell
This book provides a concise, accurate, and lively portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte's character and career, situating him firmly in historical context. David Bell emphasizes the astonishing sense of human possibility—for both good and ill&mdash...
Published: 07/31/2018
by Wil Haygood
The Story That Inspired the Major Motion Picture...Read by its Stars David Oyelowo, Forest Whitaker, and Oprah WinfreyWhen acclaimed Washington Post writer Wil Haygood had an early hunch that Obama would win the 2008 election, he thought he'd highli...
Published: 07/30/2013
by Frederick Douglas
This classic of American literature, a dramatic autobiography of the early life of an American slave, was first published in 1845, when its author had just achieved his freedom. It is a story that shocked the world with its first-hand account of the...
Published: 10/01/2015
by Gordon Leidner
"Simply the best book that has been published on this great president's humor and stories...Everyone interested in Abraham Lincoln will want to read this." ?William C. Harris, author of Lincoln and the Border StatesAbraham Lincoln has long been admi...
Published: 07/18/2019