Fireworks

Legendary gun instructor and writer Jeff Cooper wrote (or rather complied, as most he had published before) Fireworks in the late 1970s. Cooper politically was the kind of person who made Jesse Helms seem like a hippie, but the more interesting part is that he was one of the most pretentious writers ever to write. The sympathetic version is that if you’re actually teaching pistol shooting, you have to be very to the point, so writing gave him a chance to stretch his mental legs.

The not so sympathetic version is that Cooper was a perfect example of the kind of person who thinks he is far more intelligent and profound than he actually is. Combine this with being very easily impressed and you have a cross between Hemingway at his worst and your uncle who’s enthralled by this thing called “television”.

This book is entertaining, albeit likely not in the way its author intended.