Glock: The Rise of America's Gun

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More About This Book

Overview

Based on fifteen years of research, Glock is the riveting story of the weapon that has become known as American’s gun.  Today the Glock pistol has been embraced by two-thirds of all U.S. police departments, glamorized in countless Hollywood movies, and featured as a ubiquitous presence on prime-time TV. It has been rhapsodized by hip-hop artists, and coveted by cops and crooks alike. 
 
Created in 1982 by Gaston Glock, an obscure Austrian curtain-rod manufacturer, and swiftly adopted by the Austrian army, the Glock pistol, with its lightweight plastic frame and large-capacity spring-action magazine, arrived in America at a fortuitous time.  Law enforcement agencies had concluded that their agents and officers, armed with standard six-round revolvers, were getting "outgunned" by drug dealers with semi-automatic pistols. They needed a new gun.
 
When Karl Water, a firearm salesman based in the U.S. first saw a Glock in 1984, his reaction was, “Jeez, that’s ugly.” But the advantages of the pistol soon became apparent. The standard semi-automatic Glock could fire as many as 17 bullets from its magazine without reloading (one equipped with an extended thirty-three cartridge magazine was used in Tucson to shoot Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others). It was built with only 36 parts that were interchangeable with those of other models. You could drop it underwater, toss it from a helicopter, or leave it out in the snow, and it would still fire. It was reliable, accurate, lightweight, and cheaper to produce than Smith and Wesson’s revolver. Made in part of hardened plastic, it was even rumored (incorrectly) to be invisible to airport security screening.
 
Filled with corporate intrigue, political maneuvering, Hollywood glitz, bloody shoot-outs—and an attempt on Gaston Glock’s life by a former lieutenant—Glock is at once the inside account of how Glock the company went about marketing its pistol to police agencies and later the public, as well as a compelling chronicle of the evolution of gun culture in America.

  • Glock
    Glock

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
At age 50, Gaston Glock was manufacturing knives and bayonets for the Austrian army in his garage, when in 1980 he learned the army wanted a replacement for its antiquated pistol. With an okay from the minister of defense, he took on the project: “That I knew nothing was my advantage.” After consulting with experts, he hired technicians and in 1982 launched his lightweight Glock 17, sometimes called the “plastic pistol” because of its polymer frame. American police officials wanted a new handgun, and civilians gravitate toward what the professionals carry, so Glock scored a bonanza. Die Hard 2 gave the Glock tremendous public exposure in 1990, and it was featured in films throughout that decade and embraced by hip-hop stars. U.S. gun makers, who had once scoffed at the Glock, now felt threatened. When Smith & Wesson copied the gun’s design, Glock sued. Taking aim with a full arsenal of such anecdotes, Barrett traces the events that made Gaston Glock a billionaire. Assistant managing editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, Barrett (American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion) is right on target, delivering a well-oiled, fact-packed, and fast-paced history of the Glock, surveying its crafty marketing and its huge impact on the American gun industry. (Jan. 10)
Library Journal
Barrett (American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion) spent years immersing himself in handgun culture to discover how the Glock became 21st-century America's firearm of choice. Real factors (innovative design and manufacturing; brilliant marketing; the adoption of the Glock by U.S. law enforcement; glamorization by Hollywood and rapper culture; the "concealed carry" laws of the 1990s; and Glock's public spats with the National Rifle Association) intersected with myths (e.g., stories about the gun's Austrian inventor; rumors about terrorists sneaking plastic Glocks past airport security) to make the Glock the most popular U.S. handgun. By 1995, there were half a million Glocks in U.S. homes and police holsters. The gun continues to earn record profits for its manufacturer. Barrett tells the story of inventor Gaston Glock, who has become something of a "strange bird"; he became a billionaire despite many years of mismanagement at the company. VERDICT This book, which has received wide prepublication buzz in the gun press and Internet communities, is a balanced study, a must-read for anyone interested in guns, their role in American life, and how a product becomes an icon in the popular imagination.—Mark K. Jones, Mercantile Lib., Cincinnati, OH
More Reviews (2) Fewer Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
A Bloomberg BusinessWeek editor takes expert aim at Glock--the man, the company, the handgun. Before it was "America's gun," it was Austria's, where outside Vienna Gaston Glock operated a garage metal shop. When the Austrian Army needed a new sidearm in the early 1980s, the unlikely Glock designed a revolutionary semi-automatic pistol, featuring a polymer-fashioned frame. Light, thin, easy to shoot and maintain, Glock 17 beat back media assaults against easily concealable "plastic pistols" and, instead, earned the attention of U.S. law-enforcement agencies looking for greater "stopping power" against increasingly better armed criminals. Offering huge discounts and shrewdly marketing to police from its facility in Smyrna, Ga., the company employed Gold Club strippers and Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders to attract crowds, entertain clients and lend the pistol a sexy cachet that grew exponentially when it popped up all over TV and movies as the gun of choice for cops and killers alike. Within the industry, Glock went its own way, quietly settling or aggressively defending lawsuits, alternately feuding or making nice with the federal and city governments and the powerful NRA. Having reported this story for years, Barrett (American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion, 2006, etc.) well knows every aspect of the Glock phenomenon, the company's astonishing rise to market dominance and its seamy business practices--which have included money laundering, tax evasion and illegal campaign contributions. The author unmasks the in-house lawyers who embezzled and the financial advisor who siphoned funds and who clumsily attempted an assassination of the increasingly imperious founder, whose taste for mistresses and lavish entertainments only grew as Glock amassed billions. Gun enthusiasts surely will enjoy Barrett's account, but it also serves as a colorful case study of the manufacturer who beat long-entrenched, legendary brands at their own game. A solidly reported story of a modern-day Samuel Colt who transformed the handgun business.
Mark A. Keefe IV
The rise of the man and his gun, as ably reported by Barrett, is a story of innovation, manufacturing, marketing, money, lawsuits, power, influence, politics and a little sex. Barrett does an admirable job of describing the Glock's cultural and corporate ascendancy.
—The Washington Post

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780307719935
  • Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
  • Publication date: 1/10/2012
  • Pages: 304
  • Sales rank: 15,683
  • Product dimensions: 6.58 (w) x 9.76 (h) x 1.10 (d)

Meet the Author

PAUL M. BARRETT is an assistant managing editor of Bloomberg Businessweek. He is the author of American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion and The Good Black: A True Story of Race in America. Barrett lives and works in New York City. For more information, go to GlockTheBook.com.

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  • Posted January 10, 2012

    A Reporter's Journalistic View of Gun and GLOCK Culture in America

    Glock: The Rise of America's Gun is not the work of a Glock fanboy like many of these gun books are. It is the gun version of Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. Of course it is an historically-accurate representation of the life and times of Gaston Glock and everything GLOCK, Inc., and its line of handguns.

    It is also a complete history of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, a history of gun-related politics and policies, and also a very accurate and sober portrayal of America's love for and of guns.

    In the same way you read Cod even though you're not into fish or fishing, you really should read Glock. If you're anti-gun, you'll learn both about the culture of firearms in America and how powerfull and intelligent -- savvy -- a force your enemy really is. If you're pro-gun, the Glock revolution will blow your mind, especially in contrast with how pathetically every gun manufacturer in the world performed against GLOCK, especially poor Smith & Wesson, a company that watched as GLOCK came in and single-handedly replaced every .38 Special revolver in every police station in America with not only a high-capacity, semi-automatic, magazine-fed pistol, but with a Glock 17.

    I can keep on going. Each story is more amazing than the next. The chutzpah of Gaston Glock is only bettered by the cajones of his right hand man during the early days in Atlanta, Mr. Karl Walter, a man who turned the conservative and serious world of arms sales and arms dealing in America into a discoteque, into a circus, into a strip club, into a world of Hollywood action flicks, rap music videos, and an army of Glock devotees that is only bettered by those mad men and women who are obsessed with their 1911.

    So, in an exemplary blogger outreach campaign, Mr, Barrett sent me a Galley copy to read. And I read it. I consumed it and was mesmerized. I was mesmerized by how much I didn't know about these United States, about gun legislation, about gun bans and bans on high-capacity magazines. I was flabbergasted by the loopholes in these bans that were so big you could taxi a 747 through them,

    I was not mesmerized by the typical fanboy depiction of their favorite gun and gun maker, I was mesmerized by a book writen by a in investigative journalist who dig into the GLOCK empire, and its ripple effects on not just Law Enforcement but popular culture, rap music, politics, television, and hundreds of movies.

    I really didn't know anything about the history of firearms in America or how they're sourced and have been banned; how they're imported -- or, rather, sourced and then assembled -- and how they're marketed and sold.

    And that's not even scratching the surface of all that is GLOCK, Inc, and its illustrious founder, Gaston Glock, an Austrian nerd who ended up developing, designing, and producing the most iconic pistol since the Colt 1911:

    If you liked Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, Salt: A World History, The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, or Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, you'll love Glock: The Rise of America's Gun by Paul M. Barrett.

    14 out of 15 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted February 17, 2012

    I Also Recommend:

    An excellent book

    Was an excellent read, which didn't last over a weekend. Very informative on the founder of GLOCK, writings that have been limited to a few articles in news magazines and the yearly column in the GLOCK autopistol magazine. How the handgun became such a great success in the US. As a GLOCK fan, was surprised with the strip club section, and the money spent at the Gold Club in Atlanta. An interesting read for anyone that enjoys the GLOCK empire. Really would like to see a biography of the founder to come out someday.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted February 5, 2012

    more from this reviewer

    Absorbing, Powerful and yet Frightening

    I didn't grow up with guns. However, the constant presence of them in the U.S. is hard to dismiss. Barrett writes exceptionally about the history of American gun makers and the unassuming entry of Gaston Glock-Austrian- into this market. How Glock was busy making curtain rods and was apparently at the right place at the right time when he designed the Glock 17 from nothing; the gun with the least amount of parts and made out of hardened plastic. We learn about all the players and discover Glock treats women as crudely as he treats Americans-even his own daughter. Glock has become the gun everyone wants; Hollywood, FBI, Police Departments, Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh had one and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords owned the very same gun that injured her last year-a Glock. The dark side of this tale is that Glock, the company continues to have record profits and questionable accounting practices which shield millions of dollars away from taxes. But we knew it couldn't be a perfect Cinderella story.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 11, 2012

    No text was provided for this review.

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