Overview

Soon after its debut at the time of the Civil War, the Gatling gun changed the nature of warfare and the course of world history. Discharging 200 shots per minute with alarming accuracy, the world's first machine gun became vitally important to protecting and expanding America's overseas interests. Its inventor, Richard Gatling, was famous in his own time for creating and improving many industrial designs, from bicycles and steamship propellers to flush toilets, though it was the gun design that would make his name immortal. A man of great business and scientific acumen, Gating used all the resources of the new mass age to promote sales across America and around the world. Ironically, Gatling actually proposed his gun as a way of saving lives, thinking it would decrease the size of armies and, therefore, make it easier to supply soldiers and reduce malnutrition deaths. The scientists who unleashed America's atomic arsenal less than a century later would see it much the same way.

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"This book is a carnival...bursting with colorful characters, uncanny connections, and contagious enthusiasm.-- ""Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Most Famous Man in America"" ""A celebrity in the 19th century, Gatling was soon reviled for his terrible marvel and then consigned to obscurity. Keller rescues Gatling and anchors his remarkable life firmly in the landscape of 19th-century America: a time and place of egalitarian hope and infinite possibility."" -- ""Publishers Weekly"" ""The author presents as a genius, a man of decency, vision, and ambition who held dozens of patents for a variety of life--enhancing gadgets, including plows, bicycles, flush toilets, and dry-cleaning machines."" -- ""Booklist"""

Author Information

Julia Keller is the cultural critic at the Chicago Tribune and winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. She is a guest essayist on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and has been a contributor on CNN and NBC Nightly News. She lives in Chicago, Illinois. Norman Dietz is a writer, an actor, and a solo performer. Since 1962, he has toured coast to coast, presenting his work before audiences all over the United States and Canada. He is the author of the comic novel Nailing It, as well as Fables & Vaudevilles & Plays and The Lifeguard and the Mermaid, collections of his work for the stage. Norman has also performed frequently on radio and television, and he has recorded over 150 audiobooks, many of which have earned him awards from AudioFile magazine, the ALA, and Publishers Weekly. Additionally, AudioFile named Norman one of the Best Voices of the Century. He lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

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