AMERICAN GUN: The True Story of the AR-15 by Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson is about the most lethal handheld icon of the 21st century - the AR-15 rifle - which has become the weapon of choice for mass shooters. The same gun, under the name M16, was the gun that was carried by soldiers in Vietnam. Now, that weapon - or even just the silhouette of its barrel and trigger - has come to symbolize freedom for millions of Americans and the essence of evil for millions of others. AMERICAN GUN tells the essential and extraordinary story of the AR-15 for the first time. Jonathan Eig writes, "With hard-core reporting and gripping prose. [t]his is social history at its finest." AMERICAN GUN authors McWhirter and Elison are both journalists at the Wall Street Journal who have covered gun culture and the industry, including mass shootings, for years. They tell the story in three parts. The first is about an iconoclastic engineer with no formal training, Eugene Stoner, who came up with the idea for the gun in his garage workshop in Los Angeles, solving an age-old problem in weapons design - how to make a lightweight, easy to fire gun that essentially powers itself. He then, somewhat heroically, took on the military industrial complex with a small company and ultimately overcame lies and deceit at the top of the government to establish this weapon as by far the better option for the military. The book then moves to the jungles of Vietnam. It tells another part of the story of the AR-15 where the government modified the gun, naming it the M16, which didn't work very well - jamming repeatedly, costing many lives, and causing a major Congressional investigation. In the final part of the book, the terrifying story of how this weapon that has no use in hunting became more and more popular in the civilian market, beginning in the 1970s and accelerating most recently, is told. We meet upstarts and transgressive gun manufacturers as well as video game developers who celebrate the A-15's outlaw mystique in order to promote it. And we see how attempts to ban and restrict it are foiled again and again, even as mass shootings proliferate. The authors adeptly tell the story in ways that look at technology, business and politics as well as the terrible crime scenes from a variety of perspectives - from witnesses, doctors, victims to the killers themselves. They offer their unique perspective and insight into where the gun debate is today and what can be done about it. As Kirkus Reviews notes in their starred review of AMERICAN GUN, it is a " riveting exploration of the cost of the nation's fascination with an iconic weapon."