Book Review: Vickers Guide – SIG Sauer Vol.1

It’s been a while since we did a book review so let’s take a look at the latest Vickers Guide. The latest edition of the successful +P+ coffee table series examines the pistols and submachine guns of SIG Sauer and its predecessors.

Compiled by Leonardo Antaris (a noted author on Spanish Astra pistols), Larry Vickers and Ian McCollum with photography from James Rupely the book looks at every pistol made by the company from its earliest origins through to the P320 and P365. One of the special elements of the book is that we get to see the iterative development of weapons like the legendary P210, the P220, P365 and the MPX.

For me the highlights are the seldom seen prototypes for projects that never came to fruition like the MP320 submachine gun. I believe there will be a volume 2 in the future looking at the various rifles and machine guns that SIG and SIG Sauer have developed over the years.

As with the other Vickers Guide books they are weighty, beautifully illustrated and while they don’t offer an in-depth level of detail they give us a look at some developmental prototypes and rare models which we wouldn’t otherwise see documented. I love the photography and layout of these books, they show angles and detail that – unless you’re handling the weapons – you’d never otherwise see.

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TAB Recommended Reading: History of the Small Arms School Corps – Richard Fisher

It’s been a little while since we did a book review, but Richard Fisher’s new book on the history of the Small Arms School Corps is well worth a look.

Richard is a friend of TAB’s and we’ve made a couple of videos with him in the past, most recently one on how to disassemble the Vickers Machine Gun.

If you’d like a copy of the book you can contact Richard directly (for a signed copy) here. Alternatively, you can purchase the book directly from the publisher Helion Books.

TAB: Recommended Reading – The ArmaLite AR-10 by Joseph Putnam Evans

This is the first instalment of what will hopefully become a regular feature where we discuss some of the books we use when researching the guns we feature in our videos. We’ll give an overview of what the books cover, how they approach subjects and how good a resource they are.

With Vic’s recent special episode on the AR-10, I’ve been using Joseph Putnam Evans’ book ‘The ArmaLite AR-10: The World’s Best Battle Rifle‘ to help write the accompanying blog posts. While not without its flaws Evans’ book is without doubt the best published source on the AR-10 currently available.

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For many years the published material on the AR-10 was confined to both contemporary gun magazine articles on the ‘new’ rifle and a handful of retrospective articles published later. Very little was written about their surprisingly extensive combat use or even the nuances of the design changes. Even the Black Rifle books, also published by Collector Grade, lacked the context of where the AR-15 evolved from. ArmaLite AR-10 is well worth reading, and a great base for further research.