Great Book on Mauser Rifles

"Mauser Military Rifles of the World" by Robert W.D Ball is highly recommended reading for anyone with an unhealthy interest in Mausers, or surplus rifles in general. I bought this book a while ago, and I really enjoyed it - lots of info, lots of pics/p0rn.

The author first gives an in-depth history on the Mauser company and has divided the book into sections for every country using Mauser rifle variants. And there are many! Both variants and countries that is. Keep in mind that the Mauser design was used for a period of more than 50 years in armies all over the world - that means a lot of different models and modified types over the years as rifle development progressed. Every section starts with the author giving a historical perspective on the country discussed - some of these are less than satisfactory (but not totally bad), however this is a minor point as the image material and the rifle stuff is the focus of the whole book. The Swedish Mauser chapter contains a lot of nice pics and info, not as much as the chapter on german rifles or belgian FN Mausers, for obvious reasons. Studying the Spain chapter, for instance, gives some info on where the swedish models came from. I think the book as a whole really puts the swedish stuff in perspective - they were the state of the art in weapons technology back in 1894!

The book ends with a cool chapter on acessories and odd stuff like grenade launchers, devices for firing the rifles while hiding in trenches, tools and so on. The guys writing the book clearly has had contact with a huge number of super serious/sick collectors, and has been allowed to visit their super secret bat caves for inspecting their collections.

One of the most fascinating subjects discussed here are Mausers captured and in turn issued to other fighting forces - examples are german manufactured rifles sold to the baltic states in the 20s and 30s. These were captured by the germans during WW2 and used by them, then taken by the russians at the end of the war and given to the viet cong. Later on many of these surfaced in the US as bringbacks from the Vietman war. Very interesting. There are more stories like this, for instance old turkish Mausers still prized & prefered by Kurd rebels.

I recommend getting this book! I ordered it from amazon.com, for $31.49 or something like that. Go check it out.