Featured in this lot is this Sharps Rifle and Pennsylvania Kentucky Rifle book pair. The first book is called Sharps Rifle: The Gun That Shaped American Destiny by Martin Rywell; the book is a concise historical account that highlights the impact of the Sharps rifle on American history, particularly during the Civil War and the westward expansion. Rywell details the weapon's superior accuracy, innovative design, and role in shaping frontier warfare, cavalry tactics, and sharpshooting units. The book emphasizes how the Sharps rifle became a symbol of American ingenuity and played a crucial part in securing the nation’s military and territorial objectives during the 19th century. The second book is called The Pennsylvania Kentucky Rifle by Henry J. Kauffman; the book is a comprehensive mid-20th-century study of the iconic American long rifle, first published in 1960. It explores the rifle’s origins among German gunsmiths who settled in central Pennsylvania during the early 18th century and traces how their craft influenced its spread into Kentucky and beyond. Kauffman documents the evolution of its design, regional stylistic traits, and the individual gunsmiths, especially those from Lancaster County, who produced these highly prized and decorated firearms. Though it includes hundreds of illustrations, photographs, and sketches to aid identification, its technical coverage of gun-making is relatively brief with most of the text focused on makers’ biographies and stylistic detail rather than mechanical engineering . The book’s latter half is primarily lengthy biographical listings of gunsmiths and their regionally distinct styles, making it particularly valuable to collectors and historians interested in attribution and provenance. The condition of this pair of antique rifle books is well preserved with some wear tot he dust jacket of the larger book but otherwise shows a well preserved condition. The measurements of this book is 9 1/8" x 6" and 11 1/8" x 8 3/4". The collective weight of this pair of books is 3lb 8oz.