This book serves as a rare example of a discredited non-fiction item by a once respected contemporary academic.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

In search of guns -- ch. 1. European gun heritage -- ch. 2. Role of guns in the conquest of North America -- ch. 3. Guns in the daily life of colonial America -- ch. 4. Creation of the first American gun culture : Indians and firearms -- ch. 5. Brown Bess in the wilderness -- ch. 6. People numerous and unarmed -- ch. 7. Government promotion of gun production -- ch. 8. From indifference to disdain -- ch. 9. Creation of a gun subculture -- ch. 10. Arming of the American people.

Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture is a discredited 2000 book by historian Michael A. Bellesiles about American gun culture, an expansion of a 1996 article he published in the Journal of American History. Bellesiles, then a professor at Emory University, used fabricated research to argue that during the early period of US history, guns were uncommon during peacetime and that a culture of gun ownership did not arise until the mid-nineteenth century.

Although the book was awarded the prestigious Bancroft Prize in 2001, it later became the first work for which the prize was rescinded, following a decision of Columbia University's Board of Trustees that Bellesiles had "violated basic norms of scholarship and the high standards expected of Bancroft Prize winners."