Until humanity is capable of eliminating scarcity and creating, through technology, a world in which no one needs labor, capitalism will continue to be the economic model that underpins the most successful societies. For it taps into the avarice that lingers within all of us, catalyzing commerce by tempting clever entrepreneurs with riches far in excess of those the less fortunate can ever claim. In this, it incentivizes inventiveness, the very same creativity that has assembled the high-tech world we enjoy today.
But for all of capitalism's virtues, for all of its power to distinguish the insightful from the dense, the lucky from the unfortunate, the opportunistic from the slow, it has no morality. In fact, in light of the Faustian bargain it makes with its practitioners -- greed for gold --, it might be right to label it immoral for the way in which it rewards ruthlessness while discouraging generosity. Never have I read a better example of this principle at work than in this, Mr. Barrett's history of Gaston Glock and his most American gun.
Though he was a successful inventor long before he ever turned his hand to weaponcraft, Gaston Glock faced long to impossible odds when, in the early 1980s, he refocused his creative talents upon the designing and manufacturing of handguns. After all, he was a middle-aged creator of curtain rods, one man with no experience entering into an industry dominated by hundred-year-old corporate giants with proven track records and countless, skilled technicians. Who was Gaston Glock to think he could create a gun that would revolutionize an industry? And yet, Mr. Barrett argues this is exactly what this married father of three did when he crafted a simple, graceful, powerful weapon that would earn him billions.
Boasting both a lighter trigger pull and half as many parts as its contemporaries, the Glock 17 took only a handful of years to conquer America. Initially marketed to law-enforcement, it proved itself instantly attractive to cops and FBI agents combating a rising tide of violent, well-armed criminals. Arguing that their revolvers were punchless pop guns compared to what the enemy was packing, police departments across the country gradually switched to the more powerful and more expansive Glock, setting off tidal waves throughout the American marketplace that would not subside until they had set established and venerated brands like Colt and Smith & Wesson floundering for purchase. When they finally did react, they did so poorly, pedaling products that were essentially knockoffs of the startlingly successful Glock, a reality which only cemented the supremacy of the Austrian gun in American minds.
Though Glock is, in the main, a successful and entertaining history of this revolutionary handgun, its impact on the industry, its connection to criminal activity, and its contribution to the political debate over handgun use in the United States, Mr. Barrett, a veteran journalist, has outdone himself with his gripping portrait of Gaston Glock, the handgun's polarizing inventor. Though Mr. Glock is an emotionally remote figure throughout, the author's reporting strongly suggests that he was a man of principles and genius when, with his most famous invention, he upended an entire industry and placed himself, a then unknown player, at its pinnacle. However, as the years pass, as Mr. Glock amasses an incalculable fortune, his pride, which has swelled in proportion with his wealth, weakens his decency and his brilliance, replacing these virtues with the much more caustic qualities of entitlement, selfishness, cruelty and paranoia. His unchecked arrogance is stunningly apparent in the latter half of this piece.
Mr. Barrett has filled his 300-odd pages with two difficult and Byzantine stories. The former, guns and the extent to which they are inexplicably woven into modern America, is powerful and terrifying for what it reveals about the American mindset. Handguns are lethal weapons, built for no purpose but to kill other humans. To think that they can so easily find their way into the hands of the emotionally unstable and the mentally erratic is, to say the least, disturbing. The latter, Gaston Glock and the extent to which capitalism transformed him from an admirable man into a pitiable creature ensnared by his own self-regard, is a moving example of the flaws of the world we've built for ourselves. Compelling and terrifying in equal measure. (4/5 Stars)
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