Praise for A.J. Somerset

Listed among the top five books of 2015 by The Hill Times

“What makes his book entertaining, often funny and ultimately an important addition to the limited canon on guns is that Somerset is a gun guy. He owns them, shoots them and loves them. And yet he is exasperated because gun owners, along with their culture and rhetoric, have increasingly ‘grown more radical,’ leaving ‘anyone who breaks ranks’ as a ‘traitor to the cause.'”—Michael S. Rosenwald, Washington Post Book World

“What we talk about when we talk about guns: How did they become as American as baseball and as sacred as Jesus? And is there any going back? These are among the questions explored by a onetime soldier in an unflinching journey across our cultural battlefields.”—O Magazine

“A one-time soldier, [Somerset] paints a convincing picture … Yet he maintains a consistent sense of humor?self-deprecating, gruff, curmudgeonly.”—Globe & Mail

“Rambling, tragic, and surprisingly funny.”—Quill & Quire

“Absolutely fabulous.”—Terry Moore, The Drive (CFAX Victoria)

In Arms, novelist, sports shooter, and former army reservist A.J. Somerset instills new life in the gun book’s third wave: neither reportage nor redneck tourism, Arms brings ballistics, legal history, and criminology to bear on the gun in fiction and film. A sharp-eyed, snarky, sure-handed, and sportive take on America’s favorite weapon.

A.J. Somerset‘s nonfiction has appeared in numerous outdoor magazines, and his first novel, Combat Camera, won the Metcalf-Rooke Award.