At a time when crime scene television shows are all the rage amongst the civilian population, knowledge of firearm forensics is of paramount importance to crime scene analysts, police detectives, and attorneys for both the prosecution and the defense. Cartridges and Firearm Identification brings together a unique, multidisciplined approach to quest

New data surrounding the procurement and modifications of arms produced by the national armories, and under federal contract procured by the individual states and by individual members of militias, is presented here for the first time. This information, interwoven with military, political, economic, and social factors, results in new and better definitions and a clearer understanding of the arms’ historical context. Though this work focuses on military flintlock shoulder arms, details on the federal government’s procurement of arms for Indians during rapidly changing military policies of the period is also included. American Military Shoulder Arms, Volume II, contains more than three hundred photographs. As with the previous volume, Volume II is written primarily for students of arms, but also contains material of interest to historians, museum specialists, collectors, and dealers of antique arms.

American Military History provides the United States Army-in particular, its young officers, NCOs, and cadets-with a comprehensive but brief account of its past. The Center of Military History first published this work in 1956 as a textbook for senior ROTC courses. Since then it has gone through a number of updates and revisions, but the primary intent has remained the same. Support for military history education has always been a principal mission of the Center, and this new edition of an invaluable history furthers that purpose. The history of an active organization tends to expand rapidly as the organization grows larger and more complex. The period since the Vietnam War, at which point the most recent edition ended, has been a significant one for the Army, a busy period of expanding roles and missions and of fundamental organizational changes. In particular, the explosion of missions and deployments since 11 September 2001 has necessitated the creation of additional, open-ended chapters in the story of the U.S. Army in action. This first volume covers the Army's history from its birth in 1775 to the eve of World War I. By 1917, the United States was already a world power. The Army had sent large expeditionary forces beyond the American hemisphere, and at the beginning of the new century Secretary of War Elihu Root had proposed changes and reforms that within a generation would shape the Army of the future. But world war-global war-was still to come. The second volume of this new edition will take up that story and extend it into the twenty-first century and the early years of the war on terrorism and includes an analysis of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq up to January 2009.