Monday, December 27, 2004

An Excellent Gun Book!

Frank James' new book, EFFECTIVE HANDGUN DEFENSE is a must-buy for anyone who does now carry a gun for self-defense or is thinking about doing so.

Over the decade or so, Frank has proven himself to be one of the most thoughtful, most free-ranging and least-willing-to-tolerate-bullshit gunwriters out there. Frank writes what Frank knows to be true, as opposed to what he read last week in another gun magazine. He is careful to credit his sources, annotate when and where he tested this or that firearm and clearly flags his own opinions as opinions. What a novel idea!

Frank is also cold, hard proof of a fact I used to tell journalism classes (back when I was invited to journalism classes!): Writing is not a learned skill — it either comes with the overall package or it doesn't. And it is not evenly distributed int he population (it seems especially rare in journalism classes, BTW). Twenty-some-odd years ago, I got a call from an Indiana bean farmer who told me he wanted to be a writer. Sure, I said (mentally shrugging my shoulders). "Send me something you've written."

What I got from Frank was an amazingly polished piece of writing from someone who already knew how to think.

Buy his book, and you'll see what I mean!

1 comment:

Health News said...

I can't believe how much of this I just wasn't aware of. Thank you for bringing more information to this topic for me. I'm truly grateful and really impressed.