In 2026, we began the third year of our online book club. We meet four times a year to discuss recent books about guns and gun culture.
Catherine Fletcher’s recently published The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires will be the 11th book we read together. Please join us!
Registration link for the Zoom Webinar: https://wakeforest-university.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ppUVxwDuTlec6_2Fu7_7UQ
THE FIREARM REVOLUTION
We will meet on three Thursdays from 6:00 to 7:00 pm Eastern time beginning on September 17th and discuss the book in three parts:
*Thursday, September 17th: Read Introduction + Part I (Chs. 1-3, pp. 1-90)
*Thursday, October 1st: Read Part II (Chapters 4-6, pp. 91-152)
*Thursday, October 15th: Read Part III (Chapters 7-9) + Conclusion (pp. 153-243)
Participate
The Light Over Heat Virtual Book Club runs as a Zoom webinar in which 12 panelists have full speaking privileges to discuss the book. Other registrants participate as viewers with written chat capability. The chat has been extremely active and informative in previous sessions. (To encourage candor, meetings are not recorded except the Q&A with the author with permission.)
If you’re interested in attending the Light Over Heat Virtual Book Club as a viewer, please register for the Zoom Webinar discussion: https://wakeforest-university.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ppUVxwDuTlec6_2Fu7_7UQ
Only registered attendees can join the meeting.
Buy the Book
The book is available in hardcopy and e-book. You can help support the cost of my work by using the following affiliate link to buy the book.
About the Book
From the publisher’s description:
In Renaissance Italy, the gun was not only a tool of war but also a desirable object, a luxury item carried at court. Guns were in use on the battlefield by 1440; later in that century Leonardo da Vinci sketched a design for a faster-firing, more portable handgun that could be hidden beneath a cloak. As the gun proliferated in society, it became both a means of self-defence and a threat to civic order. In The Firearm Revolution, historian Catherine Fletcher explores the emergence of firearms in Renaissance Italy and beyond, describing the social transformations that accompanied the evolution of the handgun from innovative military technology to widely used personal accessory.
Fletcher shows that as guns became smaller and the new wheellock mechanism made concealed carry possible, Italian states increasingly tried to control their use—even as they viewed firearms as necessary for their militias. In the end, Fletcher reports, the importance of civic defence trumped the concern for social order. As guns became ever more acceptable, stories of how firearms aided Europeans’ overseas conquests created a new and more positive image for a weapon once considered the devil’s work. Debates over the regulation of firearms five centuries ago—which included arguments over the restriction of gun ownership, the use of guns for self-defence and the regulation of an armed militia—in many ways anticipate discussions about gun control today. Fletcher’s groundbreaking account sheds new light on how governments weighed the competing priorities of defence and social order as they set out to build empires.
Previous Books: 2026
Previous Books: 2025
Previous Books: 2024
