Their Arrows Will Darken the Sun: The Evolution and Science of Ballistics

para quem gosta da história das armas é uma boa referência. O Autor faz uma singela compilação de informações disponíveis e permite facilitar a pesquisa. Bom texto para incrementar algumas apresentações sobre a evolução das armas.

If you are interested in ballistics, this book may interest you. A physicist who has looked into the science of ballistics has decided to cover the subject in the appropriate depth for a wide audience. With that in mind, the author divided his book into two main section. The first describes the history of ballistics from when humans first figured out how to throw stones to today’s ballistic missiles. These 170 pages are mostly descriptive. While there are many charts and graphs interspersed throughout the text, the mathematics are almost non-existent. There is just enough mathematical description to let the reader know that there is science behind what is going on, but it is well hidden. For those who want to get into the mathematics, there are twenty one technical notes in the latter part of the book where you can wallow is as much algebra, trigonometry, and even calculus as you wish.This structure really works well. Those who care about a general description restrict themselves to the first 170 pages. Those with a more scientific bend, have 206 pages to play with. On the whole however, this is an introductory book. So, if you have already studied, or are familiar with various aspects of how various objects travel through the air or space, or are familiar with the history of warfare, you will find this book to be a very shallow introduction to many of the topics. I can see it being used as one of several textbooks in an introductory course to the history of warfare through the ages, or an introductory physics course. On its own though, I am not sure where it exactly fits. Given my own background, I found almost nothing new, and noticed quite a few shortcuts taken by the author and areas that were far more interesting than the author made them out to be. I suppose that was due to the limited page count the author was shooting for, so I cannot fault him for it, but that did detract from my own enjoyment of the book. Hence my final rating of three stars for this effort.

This is an excellent book! It provides a brief history of ballistic weapons. Although the author seems to underplay how complete and detailed a job he does on the science of ballistics it is actually pretty good. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in long distance shooting.

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