Glock: The Rise of America's Gun

Paul Barrett's narrative history of Gaston Glock's rise from Austrian curtain-rod manufacturer to dominant American handgun maker — a story of outsider advantage and relentless entrepreneurship.

The outsider advantage: Glock had no prior firearms industry experience when he designed his eponymous pistol — which meant no preconceptions about what guns 'should' be. The result: a radically simple, polymer-framed design that the firearms establishment initially mocked and that came to dominate American law enforcement and civilian markets. Barrett uses the Glock story to examine American gun culture, the dynamics of defense contracting, and the counterintuitive advantages of ignorance in entrepreneurship.