Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewLast year’s Gun Guys, by Dan Baum, explored America’s gun culture: its enthusiasts, its debates, its personalities. Collins’ new memoir inevitably covers some of the same ground, but it’s a more personal story, focusing mostly) on the author’s own family and friends, exploring how their lives have been affected in various ways by America’s attitude toward firearms. The story, which recounts the author’s childhood in a family in which guns were a part of everyday life, is punctuated by tragedy: a friend is seriously injured by a gunshot to the head in a hunting accident; another friend’s father commits suicide by shooting himself; the author shoots himself in the foot in another hunting accident; and so on. It’s not really a book about the broader side of America’s gun culture; it’s a book about the way a man’s life was shaped by that culture and how gun violence touched his life. Collins views a subject that elicits seemingly endless topics for debate, and gives it a single, highly personal point of view: this is how all of that impacted my life. A very interesting addition to the gun literature. * Booklist *
Craig K. Collins’ Thunder in the Mountains is not only a memoir, but also a perceptive history of gun culture in America. Bravely taking on the timely issue of gun violence, Collins ushers readers down an often overlooked way of life where guns are revered household items. Though the narrative is intertwined with the history of the gun, his prose is neither pro- nor anti-gun, choosing instead to convey an honest, immediate history of the gun and its surrounding culture, allowing readers to make up their own minds about this powerful weapon. . . .Thunder in the Mountains remains cautionary, offering readers an oft-ignored perspective and allowing one to make an informed decision about firearms. * Bookreporter *
