Reviews for The Gunning of America
The Gunning of America has been selected as a Washington Post “Notable Book” of 2016 and as a “Best Book of 2016” by Kirkus Reviews. San Francisco Chronicle included Gunning in their list of 100 recommended books! Choice Magazine named Gunning one of the Top 25 books on their list of Outstanding Academic Titles of 2016!
![](https://www.pamelahaag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/choice.jpg" "Choice Magazine")
Outstanding Academic Titles
December 2022:
Choice’s premier editorial franchise of the best titles of the year.
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Andrew van Wagner
June 14, 2021:
An interview with Andrew van Wagner on gun history and culture, marriage, editing and writing.
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Chomsky website
July 2019:
There is an interesting history to that, very well studied. There’s a recent book by Pamela Haag called The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture. It’s a very interesting analysis. What she shows is that after the Civil War, the gun manufacturers didn’t really have much of a market.
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Choice Magazine
December 2016:
The Gunning of America – OAT Preview: The Top 25 Books
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San Francisco Chronicle
December 18, 2016:
The Gunning of America – 100 recommended books
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The Washington Post
November 17, 2016:
“Notable nonfiction books in 2016”
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The Washington Post
June 17, 2016:
“What to read if you want to understand the politics of guns in America.”
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Kirkus
“An examination of the controversial realm of American gun culture through the perspective of gun manufacturers, with an emphasis on the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.”
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The New Republic
April 5, 2016:
“In her masterful The Gunning of America, Pamela Haag furnishes a salutary corrective to the perception of the gun’s inevitability in American life by showing its history as a commodity invented and then deliberately marketed and distributed like any other widget or household appliance. Backed by vast research in the company archives of Winchester, Colt, and other manufacturers, her book is a mixture of analysis and close-focus biography of the many sturdy and sometimes strange early Americans who rode to wealth on the back of firearms…[A] beautifully composed and meticulously researched volume.”
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The Washington Post
April 7, 2016:
“The Revolutionary War and its musket-loading militias. The frontiersmen and the dangers of the plains. The Wild West, with its righteous cowboys and soulless desperadoes. Patriotism and manhood. Personal protection and individual rights.”
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Starred Review in Publishers Weekly
April 19, 2016:
“In this fascinating account, Haag (Marriage Confidential) traces the history of America’s gun-making business, arguing that “the tragedy of American gun violence emerged from the banality of the American gun business.” Oliver Winchester, known as “the rifle king,” who founded one of the first private armories in America in early 19th century, is the focal point of the narrative.”
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The New York Review of Books
July 14, 2016:
“There is a tragic inevitability of timeliness when one writes a book about guns,” notes Pamela Haag in a revealing new account of the origins of America’s gun industry, The Gunning of America. Haag began writing her book shortly after the horrific mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where twenty-six were killed in December 2012, and completed an initial draft after the September 2013 shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., which killed twelve and injured three.”
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The Boston Globe
April 15, 2016:
“In her remarkable new book, “The Gunning of America,’’ historian Pamela Haag undercuts much of the charged rhetoric about the importance of firearms in the nation’s culture and history with a richly sourced, empirical look at the 19th century origins of the gun business and the men who made it.”
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Time Magagine/Macleans
April 25, 2016:
“There is a tragic inevitability of timeliness when one writes a book about guns,” notes Haag, who started work on her detailed and devastating history after Sandy Hook and finished a draft just after the Navy Yard shooting. But there’s a timelessness as well: the same political hand-wringing follows every mass murder, and the same lack of legislative action. If Americans are ever to do anything about their gun problem, they’ll have to learn from their history—and this book is a bracing eye-opener.”
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San Francisco Chronicle
April 14, 2016:
“The fundraising prowess of the gun rights movement, and the influence it wields over lawmakers, has had a devastating impact: It’s said that there are now almost as many guns in the United States — about 300 million — as there are citizens. Every year, more than 30,000 of us die from gunshot wounds, and in the three years after the December 2012 murder of 20 schoolchildren and seven adults in Sandy Hook, Conn., school shootings in the U.S. reportedly occurred at a rate of one per week.”
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Time Magagine
April 25, 2016:
“In america, guns are often discussed as a storied part of a national identity that grew, over time, from Revolutionary War militias, the Second Amendment and rough life on the frontier. But in her new book, The Gunning of America, Pamela Haag argues that this narrative is not as organic as it appears; rather, it was crafted by gun manufacturers eager to sell more weapons.”
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The Times Literary Supplement Voices
July 7, 2016:
“The TLS podcast, with Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – this week featuring: Tim Parks on reviving and translating Giacomo Leopardi; Pamela Haag on America’s surprisingly modern love affair with guns; Kate Webb on the category defying life and work of Angela Carter; finally, Alan Jenkins reads a poem by the late, great Geoffrey Hill, who died last week.”
Listen to Full Review…
Kirkus
February 15, 2016:
“An examination of the controversial realm of American gun culture through the perspective of gun manufacturers, with an emphasis on the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Historian Haag (Marriage Confidential: The Post-Romantic Age of Workhorse Wives, Royal Children, Undersexed Spouses, and Rebel Couples, 2011, etc.) deliberately eschews detailed discussions about the Second Amendment, the rights of gun owners, the advocates of gun control, and other cornerstones of our current heated political debate.”
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The Washington Post
June 17, 2016:
“Haag uses the remarkable story of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company to illustrate how American gun manufacturers remade America’s gun culture. In pursuit of sales, Winchester and other companies marketed their products as tools of empowerment. This effort, launched in the 19th century, transformed a mundane object into a potent symbol of American liberty and kick-started the modern gun rights movement.”
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The Washington Post
June 9, 2016:
“Summer books we’ve loved so far: An exploration of the major businesses and families that have manufactured firearms — and manufactured the seductiveness of firearms — in this country over the past 150 years.”
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BridgeEdU
Wes Moore Founder and CEO
“The Gunning of America provides an exceptional, fresh perspective about the gun culture in America. Pamela Haag thoroughly examines the history of America’s long term relationship with guns while offering an insightful, informative philosophy as to when and how this love affair began.”
Yale University
John Mack Faragher, Howard R. Lamar Professor of History
“Pamela Haag has written a very smart book, deeply researched, original, provocative. The compelling narrative makes a powerful argument about the origins of America’s gun culture.”
Yale
David W. Blight, Class of ’54 Professor of American History and author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory:
“The American gun industry generally, and the Winchester Repeating Arms Company in particular, taught the country to love guns. This fascinating and disturbing book is a riveting history of the men and families that made the guns that made America’s gun culture. Haag shows conclusively that this country’s tragic obsession with guns is not part of our political origins, or our constitutional and moral DNA; it is the result of marketing and industrial capitalism. Our gun culture was made, not found; it emerged less from creativity than from cold pursuits of profit. The fortunes made selling guns had nothing to do with the Second Amendment. Good history like this will not be read by the politicians and lobbyists who sustain the gun manufacturers today, but it should be.”
Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History
Karl Jacoby, author
“Firearms may be instruments of death. But they are also, as Pamela Haag reveals in her thought-provoking reassessment of guns in America life, economic commodities—so much so, that it can be difficult at times to discern where business culture ends and gun culture begins.”
Gunfighter Nation
Richard Slotkin, author
“Most explanations of that culture focus on the motives of the buyers, which range from the practical to the pathological. Pamela Haag’s Gunning of America is an original and insightful work of historical investigation, which shows how gun manufacturers created our so-called “gun culture” through the systematic marketing of their product in an unregulated marketplace.”
Stanford University
Richard White, Margaret Byrne Professor of American History
“Pamela Haag has accomplished a rare feat. She combines wonderful storytelling with a serious analysis of the firearms business to reveal how the Winchester Repeating Arms Company taught Americans to love guns.”
★The Gunning of America was picked as one of the most anticipated books of 2016
★The Gunning of America has been featured on The New York Times “Fresh Reads” newsletter in April 2016.
Reviews for Marriage Confidential
Washington Post
“Sterling….Marriage Confidential is so rare, such a pleasantly charming pearl of great price…You learn something, but you hardly notice because you’re having such a good time….Flat-out brilliant….” washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/pamela-haags-marriage-confidential-pearls-of-wisdom-about-matrimony/2011/05/17/AGVPTKCH_story.html
USA Today
“This personal meditation on the modern marital state asks questions instead of providing answers. Hers is the rare book a divorced parent can read without feeling he or she has personally undermined Western civilization….The perfect book club choice….Free of the inflammatory politics and cultural baggage that usually accompanies the topic…It does make you reflect on modern mating habits. It’s fun.” books.usatoday.com/book/pamela-haag-marriage-confidential/r172399
Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)
“with erudition and wit… Haag has her capable finger on the pulse of the American marriage…” publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-171928-8
Huffington Post
“Fascinating….Couldn’t be more timely, or relevant.” huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/summer-books_b_891906.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000008#s305775&title=Pamela_Haag_Marriage
UK Daily Mail
Bookpage
“[Haag] wittily and meticulously explores what sets apart those who suffer quietly in their semi-happy marriages from those take action.” bookpage.com/review/marriage-confidential/today%27s-marriage-minefields
People magazine
“Is marriage an outmoded institution…or does it just need a little reinvention? Haag’s well-researched, provocative study will get you thinking.” [Great Summer Reads] scribd.com/fullscreen/57401322?access_key=key-29eqis0ydl6wy8z5gocj
Psychology Today
“I read it voraciously. . . . [Haag] is thoughtful, engaging, unconventional, and amusing.” – Bella DePaulo psychologytoday.com/blog/living-single/201105/melancholy-marriage-are-we-in-post-romantic-era
Kirkus Reviews
“An easy read with a low jargon quotient. A serious examination of contemporary marriage.” kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/pamela-haag/marriage-confidential/#review
Library Journal
“This keen study…balances the juicy expose for a popular audience…and the serious, footnoted analysis suggested by the author’s credentials.” pamelahaag.com/pdf/LibraryJournal_may2011.pdf
Date Night magazine
“A fascinating journey through the evolution of marriage.” datenightmag.com/story/marriage-confidential-book-review
The Week magazine
“Haag might be right in suggesting that the spark dies because too many of us are ‘marrying ourselves’–depending on shared temperament and interests to get us through the long haul.” pamelahaag.com/pdf/theWEEKmagREVIEWS.pdf
Dinah Project
“Pamela Haag has a captivating style of writing, so this, together with an intriguing subject, equals a great read.” – Bev Damelin dinahproject.com/marriage-confidential-book-review
Shreveport Times
“This thoughtful book lifts the curtain on a national epidemic of ‘semi-happy’ marriages.” link coming soon…
Mental Health Net
metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=6199&cn=139
Fresh Fiction
Family Matters, Judge Harvey Brownstone, Toronto
“Read this book. Haag is brave enough to say things that other people won’t.”
Ms. Magazine
Top 100 Feminist Nonfiction Books
msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/10/01/top-100-feminist-non-fiction-countdown-90-81
Martha Stewart Radio, Sacramento Bee, Kansas City Star, and the Huffington Post
Named as a recommended summer read theradioblog.marthastewart.com/2011/06/the-morning-living-summer-reading-list-2.html
Laura Kipnis, author of Against Love
“A startlingly honest and surprisingly funny account of marital discontent….Avoiding comfortable bromides and rejecting the usual cliches, Haag reports on how married people really live these days– and guess what? It’s not all bad news! This is one of the few books around with something new to say about the travails of modern love and coupledom.”
Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity
“In this timely and thought-provoking analysis of modern coupledom, Pamela Haag paints a vivid tableau…Written with wit and aplomb, this page-turner will instigate an insurrection against our marital complacency.”
Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage: A History
“Pamela Haag doesn’t shy away from controversy in discussing how some marriage “rebels” try to breathe new life into their relationships. A candid and thought-provoking read.”
Debby Applegate, Pulitzer-Prize Winning author of The Most Famous Man in America
“Brilliant…Both laugh-out-loud funny and gasp-out-loud shocking, and nothing less than a Feminine Mystique of our time.”
Linda Hirshman, author of Get to Work
“The personal is political after all. This first big history of the marriages of the post-feminist generation tells a riveting story of how socially empowered women…and their mates are still struggling to find happiness in their personal lives.”
