AK47: the Story of the People’s Gun
Michael Hodges Sceptre, 225pp, £16.99
Familiar to anyone who has ever opened a newspaper or seen an action film, the AK47’s distinctive shape has become one of the defining images of modern conflict. Michael Hodges avoids a straightforward exposition of the rifle’s history, attempting instead to explain how the AK47 became “more than a gun” by merging personal accounts of war with sociological speculation about the rifle’s cultural significance.
While Hodges is right that the personal accounts of those directly affected by the AK are more compelling than a simple history
of the rifle, his impatience to explain how the AK47 became “a force in itself” and “the world’s first truly global product”, along with a litany of melodramatic one-liners, makes the book’s conclusions seem rather contrived.
In trying to understand the AK47’s legacy through first-person testimonies, from Mikhail Kalashnikov’s formative experiences on the brutal eastern front to the horror of Sudanese child soldiers, Hodges unearths some exceptional individual stories. He tells each one with such economy, though, that it is hard not to feel rushed from one chapter to the next, with the result that this patchwork of stories feels rather flimsy.
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