What critics are saying
"Rollicking and informative ... sketched
with wit and precision"
–PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"[W]ritten with a journalist’s sense of color and a historian’s eye for the revealing detail... an exceptional biography of an archetypal 19th-century American inventor and businessman.”
–WALL STREET JOURNAL
"The story of how Colt raised himself from frontier huckster to great American industrialist is the subject of Jim Rasenberger’s lively and balanced new book....Rasenberger’s narrative is, to a surprising degree, the story of America in the first half of the 19th century. It overflows with relentless ambition, energy, entrepreneurship, ingenuity and wealth, and with deceit, fraud, jingoism and murder.”
–WASHINGTON POST

OUT NOW from scribner
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. Learn more about the book, read the reviews, or browse the archival sources Rasenberger excavated to tell this story as it has never been told.