I have never heard of James Ballou. I will look up his books. They look really interesting, good how-to books to have on hand.
As a book reviewer for various survivalist publications, I have read most (not all, but a good share) of Paladin/Loompanics/J. Flores/Delta/Desert books. MOST are just sucker bait and trash! Not all of course, but 95% anyway. Like the "How to Make Moonshine" (or whatever the title was). "Get some cracked corn and sprout it...", only thing is cracked corn CAN NOT SPROUT! WTH?! The military manuals have drawings over the photos so they can copyright the "new" material and charge more. AUTHORS: Duncan Long - LONG on BS, SHORT on facts! Uniformly TRASH! In his "How to be an Info Writer" he admits that he knows NOTHING about guns and just skims other books/catalogs and then just puts in his own words. He also claims knowing anything about what you are writing about only slows you down, so he remains ignorant about guns so he can churn them out faster. MOST of his books are written by others, when he has a "writing class". Each person is given a chapter, sorry, "topic" and he changes one or two words and publishes it as "his" book. Friend took the writing class and can point out the four words that were changed in the chapter he wrote for Duncan. That is why they are trash, the people writing them have NO idea what is going on! His "Survival Guns" book was so bad that Paladin pulled it after 9 mo. In the second book, after I pointed out in a review that he was hot about (yes, he reads my stuff and even mentions me in his books, got a really nasty letter about it too!) that it was obvious he never fired or even SAW any of the guns he was recommending people bet their life on. In the 2nd, rewritten book he admits that! Provide a photo, get in the book! No need to see or fire them!! Ragnar Benson - his early books are GREAT! The later books (David's Tool Box, Caching, Crossbows. Switchblades, etc.) SUCK! AVOID the "Big Book Of...." they give you parts A-B-D-F, then tell you to buy the OTHER book to get the rest! RIP OFF!
So get the earlier Benson books and avoid Duncan books 100%. Thank you for your input. I have read some informative books and I saw one author that stated why you should have a certain rifle but never really stated why.