Book Review: Vickers Guide – WWII Germany, Volume 2

The latest Vickers Guide book is now available: WWII Germany, Volume 2. Where the first volume focused on bolt action rifles and submachine guns, this second volume has the really cool stuff: semiauto and select-fire rifles, machine guns, and last-ditch arms. It also includes a section on presentation pistols. And fair disclosure; I was one of the contributing authors, so you will find some of my bylines in the book.

The Vickers Guide series are not meant to be reference books, but rather gorgeous coffee-table material. The photography that James Rupley brings to them is just fantastic; a quality you will not find in any other firearms print material. That said, the books have been getting slowly more detailed in their text commentary over time, and this one includes sections from a bunch of subject-matter experts – you might just learn something while looking between the photographs!

Of particular note in this book in terms of rarity are both early and late pattern FG-42s (and their accessories), a Grossfuss StG, an StG45(H), MG-30, MKb42(W), and a folding-stock G33/40 rifle. If you are interested in German WWII small arms, it is not one to miss.

Available directly from the publisher, Mott Lake.

7 Comments

  1. Considering you are a co-author, I take my hat off to your honest statement that it is a “rather georgeous coffee-table” book, not a reference [the typical viewer of your outstanding videos would be interested in].
    Judging from the number of replies to book reviews, it seems to be a very sad fact that books, independent of quality, nowadays have a very small audience.

    • I concur that nowadays, the paper media base is getting rarer and rarer. Everyone thinks that online media stuff is better, but I’d rather have the physical copy if available. It’s hard to find anything good on the shelves, though. A lot of the recent novels I’ve browsed through were disappointing, especially when they started looking like smut more than actual literature.

      • “(…)online media stuff is better(…)”
        Whatever it is or not better depends on what is important to you.
        Digital media are certainly more handy to end user and more convenient to publisher.
        With single e-reader could store contest of thousands normal books for mass and size of roughly one. Also ability to search for certain word can be useful. As for publisher, distribution is much simplified, which is especially noticeable for users living in distant places and there is no risk of printing too few or too many examples.

    • “(…)have a very small audience.(…)”
      In my opinion, audience of this site is more interested in fire-arms and related stuff than book publishing – I would say more know terms like “rifling”, “locking lug” and so on that say “widows and orphans” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans therefore I find less replies to book reviews natural.

  2. An interesting review of a book about the Second World War, to be honest. I haven’t seen them for a long time, they usually tell boring stories. And now I took the time and decided to look. Since I found where they write fast essays, I use https://essays.studymoose.com/fast-essays for this. I really like it when they write for me and I have a lot of time for my personal affairs. Probably many will understand me.

Leave a Reply to Timothy Lyall Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.


*