Equipping James Bond: Guns, Gadgets, and Technological Enthusiasm

James Bond’s amazing gadgets reveal both enthusiasm about technology and fear of its potential ramifications.

The popularity of the 007 franchise depends on a seductive formula of sex, violence, and snobbery. Much of its appeal, too, lies in its gadgets: slick, somewhat improbable technological devices that give everyone’s favorite secret agent the edge over his adversaries.

In Equipping James Bond, André Millard chronicles a hundred-year history of espionage technology through the lens of I...