Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel: The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It

Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel: The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It I saw author Julia Keller being interviewed by William Velvel of the Massachusetts School of Law Book Review, on TV. I was thoroughly impressed with Ms Keller's grasp of the history of the Gatling Gun. I have not read the book, I bought it for a friend.

I have to say that I agree with a number of the other reviewers regarding this book, it does indeed devolve into tangents a large portion of the time. However, as an academic, I can see Keller's diversions as relatively successful attempts to contextualize the information about Gatling and his gun and place it in the larger picture of American and military history. Although at times she belabors a point (Gatling's belief he was limiting war and not expanding it is reiterated time and again), I found this approach very helpful. Finally, it was very nice to have a bibliography and endnotes in a journalistic book, although apparently at some point the publisher forgot to include the note-markers in the text, so one has to puzzle out which footnotes go to which quotes in the book. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the historical context and consequences of military invention (a la Victor Davis Hanson's Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think). If you are looking for a more technical discussion of the machine gun or its effects on military tactics, look elsewhere.

Americans have affection for the inventor, the fellow that builds a better mousetrap or even just tinkers away in the basement attempting to make cold fusion happen. But we are nowadays conflicted about armaments; whoever that guy was who invented napalm we might not hold in much esteem. What are we to make of the man who invented the machine gun? He wrote in 1877, "It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine - a gun - which could, by rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a great extent, supersede the necessity of large armies." Whether he was really so naïve, or whether he was deliberately trying to make his machine gun seem a tool of peace (the excuse used by every arms-maker or arms-dealer), isn't entirely clear. What is clear is that his invention made his name, a name you probably know even if you don't know the details of his life or gadget. In _Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel: The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It_ (Viking), journalist and essayist Julia Keller tells all about this influential American inventor, and looks at many larger issues in American history as well. "The Gatling gun is a weapon of death," she writes, "but its story is not altogether grim. For it is also the story of a nation on the rise and of a man who, by inventing a new kind of machine, helped propel it in that upward trajectory." Richard Jordan Gatling was born in North Carolina in 1818. He was a born tinkerer, not a farmer or store owner, occupations he had tried before his first invention came to him. He invented a seed planter that contained seeds in a hopper and dropped them one by one into just the right placement in the furrow, a great improvement over flinging seeds in all directions. Keller believes that the idea of the seed dropping into just the right place was transformed into bullets in a hopper dropping into just the right breach (of six) for Gatling's most famous invention. Gatling's machine, which looks like a small cannon on a tripod, with a circular hopper for bullets mounted above the breech and a "coffee grinder" handle to make the six barrels go around, wasn't the first attempt at a machine gun, but it was certainly the best. It worked efficiently and reliably, and should have been immediately taken up by the Union Army, but it was not. The arms-buying division of the Army was too conservative to experiment. The Gatling gun's most notable use during the years of the Civil War didn't even require it to be fired. There were bloody riots against the draft in 1863 in New York City, and the police stationed Gatling guns on rooftops. The intimidation worked and the mobs backed down. It had real use in the Spanish-American war, and Teddy Roosevelt valued it. Part of the Gatling gun's image problem is that it was bought by many foreign governments and colonial powers to suppress native populations who had no weapons to match the Gatling'

One of the merits (and there are many) of Julia Keller's Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel is that the book is more than a biography of Richard Jordan Gatling (1818-1903), inventor of the automatic weapon which bears his name. It's also a well-written, well-researched, and insightful reflection on American self-identity and the icons by which we define ourselves. We think of ourselves as humanitarian, ingenious, curious, mechanically skillful, industrious, problem-solving, determined, and upwardly mobile (the rags-to-riches aspect of the Great American Dream). As Keller points out, Gatling came to symbolize all these qualities. In the last quarter-century of his life, he was frequently pointed to as a man who personified the best of American qualities. His best known invention, the Gatling gun, was enshrined as "a laudable American accomplishment, another example of native ingenuity and craftsmanship and problem-solving acumen: America at its muscular, can-do best." But as Ms. Keller also points out, there's a certain irony to all this. Gatling invented his gun in the hopes that its incredible killing power would end the Civil War quickly. As Keller says, the gun's "brutal spit-spot efficiency would, [Gatling] hoped, persuade nations of the waste and folly of war." In fact, however, military conservatism sidelined its use on the battlefield. The only time it was used during the conflict was against civilians in the New York Draft Riots of 1863. It would be much used--some might say over-used--in the succeeding decades in the Indian Wars and by federal troops and state militia against striking workers. Foreign governments bought thousands of the guns to acquire and hold onto colonies, and Teddy Roosevelt, hero of the Spanish-American War, claimed that the Gatling was the decisive factor (along with Teddy himself, of course) in defeating the Spanish. Much like Alfred Nobel and his dynamite, then, Richard Jordan Gatling found his "humanitarian" invention used in quite nonhumanitarian muscular ways. There's also irony in other aspects of Gatling's life too: after he sold the Gatling patent to Colt, his financial fortunes dipped; and although he continued inventing right up to the end of his life (his patents include a flushable toilet), he would forever be remembered almost exclusively for his killing machine. America, argues Ms. Keller, has always had an ambivalent attitude to weapons (probably because their use against other humans tends to upset part of our self-identity as humanitarian). In the earliest days of the Republic, statesmen debated about them. That debate was cast in a completely different light by Gatling's invention of his lethal gun, which not only helped change the face of warfare, but also influenced the way in which Americans and the rest of the world thought about the ethics (and aesthetics) of killing in wartime. As Keller notes, killing became more impersonal, less one-on-one. Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel in

Brilliant cultural study of the 19th century through the lens of weapons inventions and innovations. Keller places the Gatling Gun smack in the middle of Americas growth and westward expansion. She explores the contradictions of Gatling's life and the contradictions in Americas view of itself. From steam boats to small pox to agricultural inventions to the first "machine" gun we travel with Richard Gatling through the great American experience Keller explores the importance of the American patent system and patent office, to America's rise and economic expansion. She really puts her finger on the pulse of this country in the 19th century. Packed full of great history, well paced, and a joy to read.