Revolver: Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter That Changed America

by Jim Rasenberger

A sweeping, definitive biography of Samuel Colt—the inventor of the legendary Colt revolver (a.k.a. six-shooter)—which changed the US forever, triggering the industrial revolution and the settlement of the American West.

Patented in 1836, the Colt pistol with its revolving cylinder was the first practical firearm that could shoot more than one bullet without reloading. For many reasons, Colt’s gun had a profound effect on American history. Its most immediate impact was on the expansionism of the American west, where white emigrants and US soldiers came to depend on it, and where Native Americans came to dread it. The six-shooter became the iconic weapon of gun-slingers, outlaws, and cowboys—some willing to pay $500 out west for a gun that sold for $25 back east.

In making the revolver, Colt also changed American manufacturing—his factory revolutionized industry in the United States. Ultimately, Colt and his gun-making brought together the two most significant forces of change before the Civil War—the industrial revolution in the east, Manifest Destiny in the west.

Brilliantly told, Revolver brings the brazenly ambitious and profoundly innovative industrialist and leader Samuel Colt to vivid life. In the space of his forty-seven years, he seemingly lived five lives: he traveled, womanized, drank prodigiously, smuggled guns to Russia, bribed politicians, and supplied the Union Army with the guns they needed to win the Civil War. Colt lived during an age of promise and progress, but also of slavery, corruption, and unbridled greed, and he not only helped to create this America, he completely embodied it. By the time he died in 1862 in Hartford, Connecticut, he was one of the most famous men in nation, and one of the richest.

While Revolver is a riveting and revealing biography of Colt, a man who made significant contributions to our country during the nineteenth century, it’s also a lively and informative historical portrait of America during a time of extraordinary transformation.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, American History, Audiobook, Business, Technology

448 pages, Hardcover

First published May 26, 2020

Reviews

[Porter Broyles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who hasn't heard of Sam Colt and his revolver?

It is the gun that changed the west.

As a person who has an interest in naval history and Texas history, I can't help but know about the impact and importance of the Colt.

This was the first time that I've read a biography on Colt or a history about the gun.

It was a fun book.

[Ben Denison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a challenging read. Lots of fantastic information on the creation, development rapid fire/multi shot guns.

I guess the shocking thing in all these types history of a new invention is the competitiveness and cutthroat ness of the invention process. Getting patents and keeping/defending them was a big part of the group. Colt also had a pretty messy family life, with a domineering father, sibling rivalries, lost siblings, but also an industrious father with an expectation to succeed.

Obviously the revolver and rifles changed the whole fighting dynamic of the settling of the west. It was interesting to see individuals want the new guns so bad, but the resistance Colt faced by the various services (Army, Navy, etc) who wanted nothing to do with it.

This new gun obvious changed history. Some say for the better or worse, but it definitely made an impact.

I like this book for its history and information. I would not call it an enjoyable read. I waffled between 3 and 4 stars …. 3.5 would be my choice.

[Abibliofob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never tried anything by Jim Rasenberger before but I sure will read more by this author. This book is filled with great research and facts I actually had no idea about. I always had a soft spot for the Colt brand but knew he was a good salesman. In this book I got some insight into stuff I actually had never heard before. I really enjoyed the way the author presents facts and tells a story as good as it's possible when certain documented proof is not available. As usual I have to thank Simon & Schuster, Edelweiss and Scribner for making this piece of history available to me.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

The definitive biography of the man who made the West what it was. The author does a great job of weaving together the story of Colt and reveals him as a deeply flawed man, but an eccentric genius nonetheless. Along the way we learn of some of the struggles Colt went through before becoming rich and famous. But mostly the book is an astute analysis of America's fascination with a gun culture.

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is well researched and well written. The author’s writing style is engaging and brings history to life on the pages. The book is a biography of Samuel Colt and his development of the revolver that bears his name. It reveals some of the myths surrounding Colt - some of which he started. He was an interesting character who was able to get several people involved in his dream.

This is a very good book and I recommend it to anyone who is looking for a good read about the development of the iconic american six-shootes

I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my nonfiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook  page.

[Cav · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sigh. I had high hopes for this one. I put it down, a little over halfway through...
One of the problems with Revolver is that it is just way too long. The version I have is just shy of 600 pages, and/or ~17 hours...
The first 50-100 pages went well, but then the rest of the book settled into a somewhat monotonous and long-winded tone. I don't do well with books written this way.
I am very much interested in firearms, their creators, and any interesting stories related to such. Sadly, I didn't find what I was expecting from this one...
1.5 stars.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably about 3.5 stars in my view. First, the positive points: Author Jim Rasenberger is an engaging writer capable of holding the reader's interest. There are quite a bit of interesting historical tidbits tucked into the story. And the development of a successful multi-shot fire arm was a very important part of American history in the nineteenth century. Now the negative: There is a large amount of almost pure speculation in this story, as the author admits and other reviewers have pointed out. Although Samuel Colt was a talented inventor, we don't really know how much of his gun(s) were purely his idea and how much might be 'lifted' from others. He is also credited with advancing mass-producing techniques, but again, how much of that was his genius and how much was contributed by others? The other issue I have with the book is the amount of space devoted to the lives of Colt's relatives. For some, that may have been interesting but for me it was distracting. I don't think the lives of his brothers and others contributes much to Samuel Colt's story or his historical contributions. In my view, the most interesting points were the ideas and development of the revolver and the industrial processes the allow for uniformity and interchangeability of complex parts and mechanisms.
Overall, this is a worthwhile read given a few reservations.

[Dillon Patterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a cool book. The story of Sam Colt is wild and interwoven with so much early/mid-19th century American history. Sam himself didn’t seem very likable but I really enjoyed learning more about his life, legacy, and of course his revolver.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every so often, some cretin threatens me on X, formerly known as Twitter. These soyboy types tend to lead by saying I appear weak and fragile. I doubt I would lose a physical fight, certainly against these degenerate specimens, even though it has been many years since I actually fought. I may be aging, but I am reasonably strong, very fit, and have extremely fast reflexes, and my sociopathic and pedal-to-the-metal tendencies would likely come to the fore in a do-or-die contest. Nonetheless, rather than arguing the point, my usual response, if I deign to make one, is to quote the old aphorism, “God created man, and Sam Colt made men equal.” How Colt accomplished that is the topic of Jim Rasenberger’s excellent biography.

Colt’s name, of course, is immortally associated with his invention, the first successful repeating gun, with each of five or six chambers hand-loaded with black powder, since he lived before the metallic cartridge was invented. Gunpowder weapons have always been a Western specialty, long before Colt, despite the Chinese having been the first to use gunpowder. (In a typical non-Western use of technology, the Chinese made only extremely crude and ineffective weapons, not improved for hundreds of years, which when they fell into European hands were turned into massive forged cannon and usable hand weapons within a few decades.) The idea of a repeating firearm was not new in 1814, when Colt was born, and various men had made attempts. All were either failures or were variations on the pepperbox, where a gun fired multiple bullets from multiple barrels, resulting in a gun that was too heavy for practical use. Colt, however, when only sixteen imagined and then created the first practical single-barrel repeating firearm—not just revolvers, for which he is mostly remembered, but also rifles and shotguns using the same mechanism.

Rasenberger draws a vivid picture of America in the early and mid-nineteenth century. But this is not a technical book about guns, which may disappoint some readers. Rasenberger explains the basics of Colt’s mechanism, and discusses some of the improvements Colt made over time, as well as lesser competing mechanisms, but does not offer a great deal of detail. Nor does he go into specifics about the cutting-edge factories and machine tools Colt built, beyond basic descriptions. Personally I would have preferred a great deal more information about both, especially the latter. However, mine are niche interests, and Rasenberger, I think, strikes the right balance for the general reader.

Underlining Rasenberger’s accomplishment is that the life of someone like Colt, neither politician nor military man, is difficult to recover. Not only is such a man’s life encrusted with legend, often generated by the man himself (and also in Colt’s case by his wife), but records from nearly two hundred years ago about individuals not given much to personal correspondence or self-rumination are typically largely destroyed or very hard to find. Unsurprisingly, if you read other summaries of Colt’s life after reading Revolver, most of them are bad, incomplete, inaccurate, or all of the above, and according to Rasenberger the few earlier full-length biographies of Colt are largely tissues of lies. Thus, he was forced to do a very large amount of primary research to uncover the real Sam Colt, hunting down flashes of Colt’s life in a variety of obscure places.

Sam Colt died in 1862, only forty-seven years old. He died an extremely wealthy man (worth around half a billion dollars in today’s money, though such comparisons are very rough), but all of that wealth was accrued in the last few years of his life. His father, Christopher Colt, was the son of a Massachusetts farmer. The Colts were an extended family in New England and beyond, with no famous men among them but quite a few prosperous branches, which means cousins of Sam Colt pop up frequently in these pages, often offering crucial support. Christopher Colt moved to Hartford, Connecticut around 1800, and began a career in business. Americans were already famously a merchant people, and something that comes through clearly in this book is the ups and downs of a typical American businessman of the time, when credit was easily available but limited liability was not the rule, so men frequently were ruined when business conditions turned against them. Sam Colt’s father managed to became wealthy, and fathered eight children. Yet Fortune’s wheel then brought him low. In the Panic of 1819, he went bankrupt, and his wife died shortly thereafter.

The Colt family, not just Christopher Colt, was, perhaps particularly unlucky, and not just in business failures, of which Sam Colt had several as well. While infant mortality was far greater in those years, adult mortality was not so different from today. (The Bible, after all, says that in the Bronze Age the normal life of man was seventy years, or eighty by “reason of strength.”) Yet one would not know that from reading about the Colts. Of his seven siblings and two half-siblings, Sam Colt outlived all but one. Of his own five children, all born in the last few years of his life, two died before him (and two shortly after him). Moreover, there was a debilitating thread of mental illness in the family. His sixteen-year-old sister, for example, committed suicide by eating arsenic. One of his brothers killed a man with an axe during a quarrel over a fifteen-dollar printing bill, and committed suicide immediately before he was to be hanged. And Colt became estranged late in life from another manic-depressive brother, to whom he was very close and on whom he had relied (unwisely) in important business matters. Colt himself was a functioning alcoholic, but I’m not so sure I wouldn’t be an alcoholic either, if I had to endure the sufferings he encountered in his life.

In any case, Colt grew up in the Connecticut River Valley, at that time a center of rapidly-expanding American industry. His father, recovering from his bankruptcy, managed a factory for its owners, so Colt was exposed early to manufacturing tools and processes, all driven by water, before the age of steam. In 1829, when he was fourteen, on the Fourth of July, he advertised and delivered a show for locals in Ware, Massachusetts—blowing up a raft on a lake near his home, using a remote electric detonator. He attended Amherst Academy, a well-regarded secondary school, for only a year, before he was expelled, again on the Fourth of July in 1830, for stealing a cannon and firing it repeatedly (with blanks) at dawn. A month later he went to sea, as a common seaman on a merchant vessel bound for Calcutta—because he wanted to, not because he was being punished.

No surprise, being a seaman did not suit Colt’s independent frame of mind. He was flogged for stealing food (a heretofore-unknown fact Rasenberger uncovered in the journal of a missionary who was on the trip, who himself promptly died in India). But what is well known is that that on the return journey, Colt conceived of his repeating mechanism, and carved it in wood. Most likely it came entirely from his mind, perhaps inspired by the windlass on a sailing ship, although there is a small possibility he saw another, far inferior, English repeating mechanism in India. Why he reified what he imagined, nobody knows. Maybe he was brooding on revenge. Maybe he was just bored. Later he offered various ex post explanations, designed to sell his gun, such as that he thought it would be helpful against Indians or slave revolts (Nat Turner was hanged in 1831). None of those really hold water; my guess is that his was just one of those fertile minds, similar to John Browning’s, another famous gun designer, which run in the channels of invention and give off flashes of genius.

Back in Massachusetts, Colt worked briefly in chemistry for a fabric company, while he hired a local gunsmith to produce exemplars of his new gun. The key original feature was his method of turning the cylinder, using a ratchet linked to the hammer, which fit into a divot machined into the cylinder, turning it a precise distance and locking it in place to be fired. In his peripatetic way, he soon quit his job (Rasenberger found his chemistry notebook, which breaks off in mid-sentence), and embarked on a tour all over young America, offering the entertainment of generating and administering nitrous oxide, laughing gas, to Americans hungry for technological novelty, here with a frisson of naughtiness, since nitrous oxide lowers inhibition. At the same time, he kept up a correspondence with the gunsmith he had hired, further developing his invention, and pouring his modest profits into the project. He was only nineteen, and had already developed the boundless self-confidence that would characterize his whole life.

In 1835, he turned to commercializing his investment. This required a factory, which demanded money, lots of money, so he turned to a wealthy cousin in Baltimore, Roswell Colt. Together with another cousin, Dudley Selden, and assisted by the Commissioner of Patents, Henry Ellsworth, a family friend, they patented the invention, both in Europe and America. (Ellsworth estimated the patent was worth $200,000, maybe five or six million dollars today, or more). They also formed a corporation, then a very new device, often requiring legislative approval, the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company, and built a factory in Paterson, New Jersey.

Setting up manufacturing took more time and money than expected. It always does. Worse, however, was that there was no significant market for the gun, which was very expensive, several times the cost of single-shot weapons of the time. One obvious possible buyer was the United States military, but no war was imminent, and Congress was not in the mood to spend money except if it was needed. At first the Seminole Wars in Florida and the fight for Texas independence seemed like promising conflicts for which to provide guns, even if informally rather than through official procurement channels, but both ended by the time Colt was ready to manufacture. Moreover, testing by the military revealed a problem with “chain fire,” that secondary chambers in Colt’s gun sometimes ignited when the primary chamber was triggered. In addition, the usual sclerotic nature of military procurement, combined with military doctrine that saw no need for an individual soldier to be able to fire multiple times, seeing it as encouraging lack of discipline and unnecessary individual attempts at heroism, meant that Colt could not convince the military to advocate for his guns, despite his best efforts at flattery and near-bribery. (The military was in a sense correct; volley fire, using masses of men formed into lines, was quite effective, as the Napoleonic Wars had recently showed.) And then the Panic of 1837 sent the whole American economy into a tailspin, just when Colt’s new factory went into full production.

The PAMC, in which Colt himself was only a modest shareholder, though with substantial cash advances he blew on high living (after all, he was only twenty-two), did not immediately go bankrupt. His guns were regarded with great interest, but interest does not always translate to sales, and here the sales were not enough to cover costs. Colt tried hard to sell his guns, buttering up Congressmen and military leaders, and when that failed, turned to state militias, selling a few guns here and there. He also continuously improved his design, including addressing the problem of chain fire, and adding clever design elements such as engraving to show them as “authentic Colts” and increase their appeal. But in 1841 the PAMC collapsed—though Colt managed to regain control of his patent, crucial for his future success, and did not have any personal liability for debts.

In 1842, not seeing what else to do, Colt turned to a new line of work, prefigured by his earlier activities—blowing up ships with remote-detonated gunpowder charges, using very long waterproofed copper wires with galvanic cells generating the spark. Again on July 4, he blew up a sizeable ship, and by the next year, he was blowing up five-hundred-ton ships, to public acclaim. His goal was to sell this weapon to the military. But he was again frustrated by military procurement, which correctly saw that this was not a new invention, and by Congress, which again would not pay money for it. Driven by the internal spring that characterizes all successful entrepreneurs, Colt next turned to the new technology of telegraphs, starting a venture to run a line from Coney Island to Manhattan, in order to more quickly bring news from inbound ships to the city, primarily to sell to financial speculators. This had some success, but again cost more than expected, and brought in less than needed.

Meanwhile, however, unexpectedly Colt’s guns had been getting use, and wide publicity, in new areas of actual successful application. The most important was use by the Texas Rangers in their battles with the vicious Comanche, fantastic fighters who were raping and torturing their way across the hill country of Texas. One of them was Samuel Walker, a charismatic young man, who used the revolver to obviate the Comanche advantage given by their rapid fire of arrows from horseback. And then in 1846, finally, Colt’s luck began to change. Walker, taking a commission in the regular Army, became a hugely publicized hero in the Mexican War, and credited his exploits, and those of his men, to Colt’s revolver. Seeing an opportunity, Colt wrote to Walker, and entered into a partnership of sorts with him.

Walker advised Colt on improvements to the gun, creating the Colt Walker, one of the most famous firearms in history, an accurate, reliable, and powerful (if very heavy) handgun. Walker’s public association with Colt broke the logjam with military procurement, resulting in decent-size orders for the first time. Colt was able to build a small factory, returning to Hartford, that he wholly controlled, having had enough of his cousins whinging to him about his inadequacies. Walker himself, in 1847, received two of the first pistols manufactured, with a thousand more on their way—but immediately died in an obscure Mexican town after an obscure battle, probably stabbed in the back by a lance wielded by the grieving father of a dead Mexican soldier. But Colt was over the hump, and the California Gold Rush accelerated demand for his guns.

By 1849, Colt was producing a hundred guns a week, and employing a hundred men. This was far from enough to meet demand. Still, he went to Europe, selling his guns to the French, the Russians, and the Turks. He kept expanding his factory, while successfully defending his patent against infringers, and his exhibition of his guns at the Crystal Palace in London, in 1851, was wildly successful, further expanding demand.

Among other manufacturing innovations, many led by his chief manufacturing lieutenant, Elisha Root (who had been present when Colt, at fourteen, first blew up a raft in Ware), Colt was one of the pioneers of the “American System”—an early form of assembly line manufacturing, using parts that were not precisely interchangeable but needed minimal “fitting” to create each gun. He opened a factory in England, and he and his agents sold guns all over Europe. The Crimean War, in 1853, accelerated demand yet further, as did, in America, increasing conflict with the Indians and the rising tensions between North and South. By the mid-1850s, in part due to innovative practices such as paid product placement, heavy advertisement, and the use of early influencer endorsements, Colt “enjoyed the kind of market penetration and brand recognition that few if any other American products had ever known.” He also had a state-of-the art factory of nearly a quarter-million square feet, enormous for the time, now using steam instead of water power, located in what was effectively a company town outside of Hartford, overlooked by his enormous and eclectic mansion, which he called his “shanty.”

Only in 1856, forty-two years old, did he marry. His wife, Elizabeth Jarvis, lived for forty years after his death, and was largely responsible for his legend, emphasizing his accomplishments and retroactively smoothing off the rough edges. Unfortunately, Colt was already suffering from the rheumatoid arthritis (not just gout, as Wikipedia would have it) which would disable and then kill him, exacerbated by his alcoholism, smoking, and excessive eating of rich foods. As the Civil War loomed, then kicked off (John Brown carried Colt revolvers), both South and North had a voracious appetite for more of Colt’s weapons, though he stopped selling to the South when the war actually began. For all his success, happiness, perhaps, eluded him. His first two children died as infants, sending him into depression. By 1862, his factory produced more than one hundred thousand revolvers a year. However, he died in January of that year, leaving behind not only his technology, but also many men who worked for him as manufacturing experts, several of whom were crucial participants in America’s post-Civil War expansion.

Colt’s career exemplifies an important point about highly successful entrepreneurial leaders (who are, for very good reason, almost always men, as I have discussed elsewhere). Whatever the talents of such a man, he needs force of will. True, will must serve talent. Will of itself creates nothing, but force of will is necessary for any successful entrepreneur. Will is needed because any entrepreneur faces continual obstacles. As I like to say, business consists of dealing with a rolling series of little disasters, and only the man in charge can ultimately deal with, and must deal with, those disasters. In the face of this oppositional torrent, only a man of iron will can maintain the discipline and decisiveness necessary to succeed. True, many businessmen of great will are nonetheless total failures, because of bad luck, vices and lacks which outweigh their talents, or poor choices. But that does not change that success requires will.

Aside from will, entrepreneurs often have different talents. For . . . [Review completes as first comment.]

[William Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thank Scribners for providing me with a review copy of Jim Rasenberger's "Revolver: Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter that Changed America." This text takes Samuel Colt's creation of his iconic revolver in the first half of the nineteenth century and uses it as a nexus and a sort of literary device to examine the industrial revolution and the ways in which this particular weapon influenced American society and the developing popular culture of the expansive young Republic. I must admit that upon first gazing upon the title I rather misunderstood what was to come. That it to say, I have a fascination with technological history and thought that this would be more tightly focused on the technological history and development of the revolver itself. It isn't that elements of this are not present, but they clearly take a back seat to a close focus on the wild ride that was the life of Samuel Colt. In fact, one would not be remiss in classifying this as more of a biography than a technological history. Nonetheless, it is a fascinating read, and the influence of Colt, both through his weapon itself and through his marketing and industrial activities, makes for a useful critical approach to the development of the American economy in the years prior to and just after the War Between the States. I recommend it to anyone interested in studying the development of our economy and the "American Dream" in the first half of the nineteenth century.

[Patrick Macke · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is far-flung and unwieldy and if it was a taxi ride it would be a journey that went down every possible side street before arriving at the destination ... it is first a world history, then a book about Sam Colt and really not very much a book about the revolver ... Sam Colt in this telling is an ambitious, illiterate, impulsive, antsy, sometimes genius sometimes con-man that is not in any way likable ... the book is filled with minutia and the gun we all came to see is rarely fired

[Gareth Osborne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Samuel Colt could not have been created anywhere but America. A proto-Trumpian huckster with a mile-wide narcissistic streak and a singular vision to create the first and best multi-shot revolving pistol, he would become one of America's wealthiest tycoons.

And all from an idea he whittled on a ship when he was 16, based on the ratchet of a windlass. Although, that may just be a story he made up; it's difficult to tell. There are a lot of contradictory stories about Colt, many of them made up by himself.

A self-invented man, and a self-declared self-made man, conveniently ignoring the uncles, cousins, and friends who funded his early ventures, almost always regretting it. (A family friend was the first commissioner of the United States Patent Office, virtually guaranteeing that Colt would receive a patent for his invention.)

His sense of showmanship rivaled P. T. Barnum, and his skills at lobbying and spotting opportunity were certainly remarkable. He knew the greatest friend the mass-producing gunsmith could have would be a juicy war or two.

“In America, where manual labor is scarce and expensive, it was imperative to devise means for producing these arms with greatest rapidity and economy.” Those production methods would spread throughout the United States economy, undergirding what some called the Second Industrial Revolution, eventually becoming the assembly line manufacturing techniques of other tycoons like Henry Ford.

Over time, Colt’s revolvers became a great symbol of the West — a technology of Manifest Destiny, soaked in blood.

Maybe the most important users, certainly the most influential early adopters, were the Texas Rangers who took up his weapons in their wars against the Comanches.

Even a great marksman could only get a shot off every 30 seconds with a muzzle-loaded weapon. Comanche warriors could nearly shoot an entire quiver of 20 arrows in that time. Famous Texas Ranger leaders, like Jack Hays and Samuel Walker, saw in Colt’s revolvers the potential for new battleground tactics - mounted skirmishers, firing multiple rounds on the move. It decimated their enemies and turned the tide of the Indian wars.

As Colt’s health began to fade, and the popularity of his guns increased, a firebrand preacher called John Brown attacked the federal armory at Harpers Ferry in an attempt to start a slave insurrection. John Brown was the spark that set the flame to the civil war.

At the time of Colt's death in 1862, the great bloodbaths of the war remained unfought - Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysberg - but thousands of young American men had already perished. Before it was done, 620,000 would die in the world's first industrial war.

Colt said he believed that the more efficiently his guns killed people, the less they would want to do so, because they would be appalled at the ease of mass slaughter.

Every outlaw carried Colt revolvers and drew them with frequency - the Dalton gang, Pat Garrett, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Wild Bill Hickock.

In 2012, a shooter carrying an AR-15 killed twenty-six children and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The Colt Manufacturing Company holds the patent for the AR-15.

It seems we are inured to the ease of slaughter, and the old lie that the only thing to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

[Lynsie Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

olt is one of the most recognizable and authoritative brands of firearms in present-day America. They are a household name here in Texas, my husband’s grandfather even had a picture of their founder framed and hanging in his office (he was a gunsmith). The South and revolvers are so deeply entrenched in each other’s history it’s hard to picture one without the other, but how did this marriage happen?

In “Revolver: Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter That Changed America”, Jim Rasenberger excavates the life and unbelievable story of the inventor of the revolver (or six-shooter) and founder of the Colt’s Manufacturing Company, Samuel Colt. Sam had a rocky, yet well-connected upbringing. He was able to get a job sailing on the Corvo, where he would make the first prototype for his gun, and by selling nitrous oxide hits to crowds of people, he was able to save money and file for a patent. Colt’s company is initially a failure, but with the help of Texas’ war for independence and the California Gold Rush, he eventually achieves success, becoming a progenitor of industrialization, an embodiment of Manifest Destiny, and one of the most wealthy men in America.

This story is extraordinary, sometimes unbelievable, celebrity-riddled, and bloody. At several points I questioned what I was reading. This story is as wild as the west it partly takes place in, but Jim Rasenberger manages to hold on to the reins and guide the reader through the flurry that was America in the early-to-mid 1800’s. He takes a (somewhat) unapologetic view of the people and events in Sam’s life, with a directness that is refreshing.

Some of the more technical aspects of Rasenberger’s writing such as gun part measurements were a bit slow and clunky to read but they’re short and easy to get through. What I really appreciated from him was the willingness to admit that he didn’t know. A lot of times in writing biographies or other works of nonfiction, people try to fill in the gaps with rumors or speculation to write a cohesive story, but he is quick to let the reader know if something is just a rumor, or if he was unable to find information on a particular person or event. One thing I wish Rasenberger would allow his reader to do is sit with how uncomfortable history can be. There are many instances of racism and genocide in the story of Sam Colt; this is the time of Texas independence and western expansion. I felt like he added a qualifier if anything too ugly happened. You can’t polish a turd, as they say in Texas.

This book was honestly a joy to read. It had all the excitement and outlandishness of a western film but with the right amount of “what the *bleep*!?” that is the tell-tale of a true story. I lost count of the instances of me reading parts to my husband because of the audacity and reach of the people in Sam Colt’s life. This isn’t to say Colt didn’t do some audacious things himself. One of my favorite authors, Edgar Allen Poe, was inspired by the suicide (or murder?) of Sam Colt’s brother John, while he was on death row. The crime he was convicted should be a book of its own. Needless to say, besides the glossing over of some tough history, I highly recommend this book. Order it today. You won’t regret it.

[Todd Kiger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Samuel Colt. A key player in the history of firearms not only in the United States but in the world. I just finished the book by Jim Rasenberger about Colt, “Revolver, Sam Colt and the Six Shooter That Changed America”. When I thought of Sam Colt, the father of the revolver, my thoughts immediately went to a picture of gunsmith slaving over an old wooden workbench, probably wearing a leather apron; spending tireless hours in the shop perfecting his inventions. I pictured a gunsmith like John Browning or Eliphalet Remington in a poorly lit shop repeated experimenting with his designs. I was wrong in regard to Sam Colt. Colt was a master design engineer and was able to perfect the revolving firearm, yet he mostly had others putting his designs into metal and wood. He was the ultimate CEO of his companies. He displayed a rare sense of dedication and devotion to his ideas. He never gave up on his dreams and inventions, regardless of who he had to take advantage of or who had to bribe. He may have been considered unscrupulous, devious and possibly underhanded; or maybe he was just doing business the way it was accepted during that period of time. He had a tireless attitude in all his endeavors whether it was his revolving firearms, his underwater mines or his leisure activities.

As Rasenberger points out, Colt was a master of manufacturing and was among the first to utilize the assembly line to successfully build firearms. Colt certainly was not one to pass up an opportunity for a sale and was known to play both sides of a conflict be it in Europe or America. His personal life was not only interesting, but often confusing, complex and to some extent sad. A book could probably be written just on his family and his personal life and the complexities he experienced. This book does an admirable job in explaining Colt’s life and personality without going too much “into the weeds”. There are times the author provides ancillary information in surrounding circumstances which may or may not add to the book’s main theme. Especially near the end of the book, the author deviates from the story at hand and the reading drags a little; it was almost as if he had to achieve a goal of a certain number of words to complete the book. Even with a few of those deviations, the book was very informative on a key player of American history and firearm development.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Narrative of Resiliency and Good Fortune

Talk about meeting the right people and having events work in your favor is the best way to describe the life of Sam Colt, a man of great complexity, a bevy of realized and unrealized ideas, While his revolvers were deciding factors in taming and settling the West as well as instrumental relative to their use in deciding the Mexican War that gave the US invaluable territory such as California just as gold was discovered, they also played a significant role in the spilling of Native American blood and contributing to great deal of lawlessness. Nevertheless, Rasenberger gives an excellent account of Sam Colt, portraying him as a flawed human being, who suffered many personal tragedies, a brilliant, ingenious inventor who really has not been accorded the status he deserves, an opportunist and visionary businessman, an a man who experienced, in my opinion, a good deal of luck both in the people he met and the events that enabled him to move forward with the mass manufacturing of his revolvers and realize significant wealth in doing so.

Rasenberger also details in an excellent manner the advent of mass production and the beginnings of the American Factory System and those instrumental in that process such as Elisha Root.

There are many interesting stories and characters that comprise this thoroughly researched book, making its contents rich in historical accuracy and details as well as connecting a diverse number of famous and infamous personages in events both well known (Mexican War, Texas Rangers) and not so well known (James Colt and his murder trial, the Regulators).

I’ve never read anything by Jim Rasenberger but after reading “Revolver” which I greatly enjoyed and highly recommend, I will be make one of his books my next read. He a great writer, author.

[RMazin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Samuel Colt lived just forty-seven years, but in that time, he made a profound impact on the settling of the West, warfare, and American manufacturing. He made his fortune by being brash, ruthless, and clever. He could also be stubborn, indulgent and petty. All these qualities define a man who had a vision for his invention, but then needed to marshal financial and political resources to achieve his success. His accomplishment was quite stunning given his lack of formal education and role models. He traveled throughout the States and abroad to create his empire. In every sense he was an American success story garnering friends and enemies, supporters and nay-sayers; frequently using friends and family to meet his needs.

But the author does much more for the reader than to give a profile of this man. Colt’s greater achievement may have been in establishing the beginnings of assembly line manufacturing based upon specific machinery to produce standard parts. Rasenburger also gives a great historical background to the time period that enabled Colt to succeed. The author deftly touches upon the rise of Texas, the development of Westward expansion, coming conflicts with Native Americans, the demise of the buffalo, bloody Kansas, the beginnings of the Civil War, Mexico, and colonial and European Wars.

For those expecting a moral treatise or a glowing account about the revolver, they will not find that here. This is history; moralizing and praising comes in hindsight (although there are some who had inklings about what would evolve). Lastly, there is the unexpected: romance, a scandalous murder and a mysterious woman.

Highly recommended. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

[Dennis R · Rating 3 out of 5]

The risk of writing a biography of someone like Sam Colt in today's political and social environment are many and added to those risks is the difficulty of coming to conclusion about a person like Colt. Like Custer, Colt's wife became the keeper of his flame on his death and was careful about what records of his life were maintained and which destroyed. Mr. Rasenberger does a good job with the limited and often second and third hand documentation in presenting Colt's life. There is no doubt that Colt's revolver was one of those items of industrial design which changed the world. Mr. Rasenberger shows however that if Colt had not invented or created the gun it would have been created by others, the march of progress cannot be halted. Colt's life was filled with contradictions and we can see many of the flaws and failings of today's political system were present in those supposedly halcyon days. I found particularly interesting the results of the first tests of the revolver by the Army. The rejected it because it would change the face of warfare, in their opinion it heralded the end of mass formations of soldiers, shoulder to shoulder firing mass volleys to one of soldiers increasingly involved in individual actions using their own discretion and guidance. It took three more wars before that happened but Colt showed the way to a new way of warfare.
Colt's personal life today would have landed him on the front pages of People almost weekly and the tragedy of his family was intense.
All in all an enjoyable read and illuminating.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating story of Samuel Colt -- part-time inventor, part-time huckster, and full-time brilliant man of destiny. His eponymous "revolver" turned the world of warfare, self-defense and hooliganism on its ear. The Colt revolvers, beginning with the first prototypes and production models, through the Walker Colt, the 1851 Navy Colt and the 1860 Army Colt defined America throughout the Civil War and thereafter. Alas, the famed (and ironically named) "Peacemaker" did not appear until a decade after Colt's death.

But the guns are only part of the story. The real story was Colt. I really don't believe that anyone could have expected Colt (first poor, rich, poor again, and then super-rich) would have succeeded at such a high level even before he turned 40! The depths of his inventions, his investments, and his dogged relentlessness of his marketing made him the man we remember (as well as the success of the gun bearing his name). The author kept an otherwise-flat story interesting with his clever observations. He had me at John Colt "throwing his parents under the omnibus." Such word-play kept me entertained. He had tragedy in his life including the loss of three children in infancy, which I guess wasn't uncommon back then, but tragic nonetheless.

In all, it was an exceptional book about an exceptional person. Love him or hate him, he was one of the great stories of 19th century America.

[Tom Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a book about a loveable man. However, it cannot be denied that Sam Colt was a highly influential man of the middle 19th century. More than his six-shooter was his (really Elisha Root's) watershed development of a manufacturing process highly dependent on dedicated powered machinery. I hesitate giving this book FIVE stars for two odd...oversights?

[1] Jim uses the old est. for the number of soldiers who died during the war - 620,000.
for the last eight years the more accepted number has been increased to 750,000. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/sc...

[2] the really strange lapse is from page 360. "the Henry rifle held as many as sixteen of these (cartridges: each containing a casing, primer, powder and bullet all in one) in a tube ABOVE the barrel." That should be BELOW the barrel. Damn near fell off the floor when I first read that. How could a book about a revolutionary firearm contain such a basic error?

The above shakes my confidence in Jim's other observations. On the other hand Jim did write an excellent book that held my attention all the way through.

There are some huge historical concepts succinctly covered: Manifest Destiny, slavery, the foundations of Democracy, the truth that 'no man is an island'.

[Bradyn Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is perhaps no wilder story than Sam Colt. He was a man of many contradictions, charitable and warm but also exacting and cruel. Bad with the pen and a simple producer but with tinges of science and a certain tinkering genius. He had laser-sharp focus which led him to do the incredible things he is known for but also made him imminently disagreeable. He didn’t make a real sale for 16 years and still continued on with his gun!

There’s so much here to learn from Colt’s life. So many steep negatives with only slight positives. But like everyone else traits are two sides of the same coin. Those who push to make the world they want to see face so much rejection and have to fight so hard to realize their goal in the first place and afterwards they’re criticized for a lack of ethics? The next innovators should learn this cycle from the likes of Colt and completely ignore it. You have to be a megalomaniac to do the world changing things Colt did just to be able to ignore the critics. I thank the author for questioning the ethics of Colt to make this contrast clear.

But this book is as much about the era as about the man. While this commentary was excellent and necessary context and even lovely historical writing, I wish it focused even more on Colt’s factories and less about the mysteries that surrounded him. Just my two cents, that’s the reason I read the book though.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Samuel Colt, popularizer of the revolver, was an interesting entrepreneur and historical figure, and while I knew a lot about his firearms, I didn't know much about the man, his businesses, and other aspects of his times. Studying Colt is complicated because while he was very "public", he was also very controversial and had a lot of reasons for changing public perception to support various lawsuits and marketing of his products, and then his widow made a pretty massive effort to redact the record of his life after his middle-aged death to preserve his, her, and the company's legacy.

He's a great example of a fundamentally "complex" person -- "not a good man, but a great one". Very much not a straight line path to success, and probably not someone you'd want as an employee, but the only person who could have brought the revolver to the level of success it had at the time.

The author does an excellent job of putting all of this in context, especially of the Indian, Mexican, and Slavery conflicts in the mid-1800s US, and showing why various aspects of historical scholarship with respect to Colt are rather difficult.

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s beyond doubt that the Colt revolver changed the trajectory of westward expansion within the United States. This revolver is synonymous with some of the west’s most notorious characters, but little is thought when it comes to the man who created this revolutionary firearm.

“Revolver” seeks to change that sentiment, highlighting the many escapades Samuel Colt went through to ultimately create the Colt firearm. Rasenberger’s research is meticulous, feeling like a comprehensive biography of Colt’s life. While the revolver certainly is a central point, it takes a long time to get to the creation of this gun, which made for such an intriguing read. You get a solid grasp of who Colt was before his fame, or infamy, giving life to the person behind the creation.

This is a very niche topic to read about, but I found it to be absolutely invigorating. It’s a great read for those looking to get a historical examination of the boom of the 1850’s and the creation of some of America’s still-held work regiments. It’s a time capsule for this period of time that I simply couldn’t get enough of.

[Dave Buttrill · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a great, detailed account of the legacy of Sam Colt. Between side stories about conflicts in the times and the telling tale of Colt, the reader gets a through understanding of what the land was like at this time.

Would have given 5 stars but the books strength is also it's weakness. If you're wanting a quick snapshot of the tale of Sam, find another book. This book is packed full of information of not just his life, but his dealings, the wars which called for his arms, and the political landscape at the time. So I'd say it's a good read if you want to come away from the book with a thorough understanding of it all, otherwise this is a painful read and took some discipline to finish.

All in all I enjoyed the read. I appreciate the extensive research gone into the writing of this book. Though the opinions on guns differ, you can't say this book wasn't an interesting moment in history of not just Sam Colt, the U.S., or guns, but entrepreneurship, conflicted as this tale may be.

[R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good book! I knew generally of Colt's development of the revolver and have driven by his old factory many times. Rasenberger fleshed out a lot of the details and gave me a better understanding of Colt, his competitors and the fortuitous events that (ultimately) made his gun business so successful.
The book covers only Colt's lifetime (with a brief "afterword" about many of the people who were part of his story). And it does a good job highlighting the curious gaps/inconsistencies in the historic record, possibly as a result of efforts to "sanitize" his story after he died.
While the revolver is a key piece of the story, it's really Colt himself who is front and center. There's a cursory description of different models of the revolvers and some description of technical issues related to them, but it's not a detailed history of the revolver's development.

[Carol Fordahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sam Colt’s six shooter came at a time in history that was extremely beneficial to him. The addition of Texas to the U.S. along with the subjugation of the Native American population were early promulgators of his invention. Add to that wars in Europe and the impending Civil War and you have a recipe for personal wealth. Colt was a tireless inventor, self-promoter and all out workaholic. He died at 47 but got more done in a short lifetime than 50 current ne’er-do-wells of today. Colt once said, “The good people of this world are very far from being satisfied with each other and my arms are the best peacemakers.” From the Colt repeating revolver came the Gatling gun, then the machine gun. This was a story that filled in many historical gaps for me. Interesting start to his career involved nitros oxide.

[Denice Langley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The true story of a man whose life had a huge impact on history. Sam Colt was a larger than life character in an era when many men were making huge changes in the lives of everyday Americans. While the title is Revolver, Jim Rasenberger's excellent story is on Sam Colt, the man. We learn how his invention of the "six shooter" swept across a growing nation to provide the tool used most by lawmen and ranchers in the era. But we also see how this one invention allowed Sam Colt to write his own ticket to success. If you did not know this was non fiction, you could easily rank the story as one of the best western fictions written today. An outstanding tale of an era that would influence history across the continent. It is also a very entertaining read of a very entertaining character.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of this book is guesswork due to information being unavailable, although to his credit the author admits to pretty much all of it. A large portion of the book is spent convincing the reader that Sam Colt was an entitled brat turned entitled boozer, womanizer, and corrupt bastard who should probably have been smacked upside the head by his parents a few more times. The book does a very good job of making the reader want to despise Colt personally, regardless of the impact he had on everything from Manifest Destiny to the Civil War. As a sort of B-plot, the book's description of what would now be called "official misconduct" and "outright bribery" in Washington makes one think that modern politicians might not be so bad after all.

[Dan Downing · Rating 4 out of 5]

More than a biography, Mr. Rasenberger has given us a portrait of the United States c. 1810-1860. His thirst for context fills the book with murder trials, war plans, election contests, foreign wars and the quest of one man to realize his dream. Along the way the American method (of manufacturing) was born. Sam Colt had a fairly straightforward life although several aspects of his personal behaviors have been clouded by his own desire for privacy and his wife's efforts to make of him a saint after his death. Bad writing and poor history have not helped clarify. Thus the mysteries throughout the book. No matter. The story is interesting and the machine he invented deadly.
Recommended.

[Kasey Ketterling · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed and recommend this book. Sam Colt was everything from a quack doc selling hits of nitrous gas to get high to a genius entrepreneur who found a way to produce thousands of guns in a assembly line style factory. I’ve determined the man won’t go onto my list of men I truly respect….because he was often not that kind of man. However, this book is well written and tells of an invention made at the perfect moment in history when the settlers were going west, war with Mexico, Crimean war with Russia, and America entered into civil war. It was a time when everyone felt they needed guns. One line by the author stood out to me, “Colt’s fortune was inversely bound to the misfortune of others.”

[Christian Lawson-Statham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Between a 3.5 and 4 for me. Will lean to 4. The story itself is super interesting and intersects so many parts of modern day American culture and business culture. Colt also interacts with loads of surprising characters within world history. The author goes into great detail on all characters Colt interacts with and the places he visits. This is quite tiresome at the start of the book as these mentions seem pointless but some of them pay off towards the end as his business empire expands. However, many fade in your memory as the story progresses. Also one of the most interesting parts of the story is colts long term legacy but this is barely touched upon. This would be 5 with a more streamlined entrance into the story, replaced with more content on the company’s lasting legacy.