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Arms & Armor Gunpowder, Alchemy, Bombards, & Pyrotechnics: The History of the Explosive that Changed the World by Jack Kelly $14.95 / Basic Books / 2005 Musketeers, buccaneers, and engineers may find little to agree with in the annals of history, but there is one thing they have in common: a hunger for the nearly mystical compound that was known simply as poudre. In Gunpowder, Alchemy, Bombards & Pyrotechnics, author Jack Kelly examines this remarkable concoction. Kelly's history of gunpowder begins in 10th-century China, where Oriental alchemists revealed the combustible potential of a new "fire drug," in their search for an elixir of immortality. Contrary to the popular myth that gunpowder was never employed as a weapon in Asia, Kelly shows just how resourceful the Chinese generals were with this new technology, as they frustrated Jurchen and Mongol invaders in the 12th and 13th centuries with rockets, primitive flame-throwers, and history's first cannons. Kelly then follows gunpowder's smoky course from the Orient into Europe. Not only did gunpowder render the knight and the castle essentially obsolete, it also blasted its way into nearly every aspect of Western society in the 15th and 16th centuries. For instance, the budding field of modern science was developed, in large part, from the efforts to understand the combustible nature of gunpowder. Political realities, too, were altered by gunpowder, as European kings consolidated their authority in order to get the resources needed to equip their armies with guns and cannons instead of swords and crossbows. In Kelly's hands, readers even learn about the effects of gunpowder in the Elizabethan world. How much less dramatic would the Bard's plays and his contemporaries have been if not for the glamorous stage pyrotechnics and fireworks made possible by gunpowder? Would London's Globe Theatre still be standing today if not for the gunpowder sparks that ignited it during the infamous performance of Henry VIII in 1613? Of course, no history of gun- powder would be complete without exploring the developments on the high seas in the 16th and 17th centuries. Kelly steers his remarkable narrative into the waters of the Age of Sail, as he reveals how sail-rigged merchant ships, which were previously too slow to battle against the military potential of oar-powered galleys, were transformed into fearsome vessels of war when mounted with cannons. He also reveals the beneficial, non-military applications of gunpowder, from mining and industrial manufacturing to mathematics and science, pointing out that Isaac Newton used the model of a cannonball in flight to develop the law of planetary motion. Kelly finally tracks the astounding ways in which the new uses of gunpowder affected the course of history, from the Napoleonic wars at the beginning of the 19th century to the American Civil War towards its end. By the time black powder became obsolete with the advent of new, more efficient smokeless propellants, Kelly has masterfully demonstrated how our world had been shaped by mankind's boundless creativity in applications of artificial fire. Kelly's prose is smooth and gripping and his bright narrative is liberally sprinkled with quotes from towering figures of history, such as Francis Bacon, Galileo, Alfred Nobel, Victor Hugo, and Genghis Khan, giving Kelly's book a truly epic perspective. Whatever period of history fascinates you, Gunpowder is one of the rare books that sets the events of history ablaze and demonstrates how explorers, adventurers, and innovators throughout the ages have sought out this conbustible powder. —Scott A. Farrell

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