Type "Mikhail Kalashnikov" into Google and the biography of the inventor will come back to you almost at the speed of light. Squeeze the trigger of a Kalashnikov and a bullet is kicked up the barrel by an archaic chemical explosion that would have been quite familiar to Oliver Cromwell or General Custer. The gun--antique, yet contemporary--still dominates the world. Geopolitical events and even consumer culture have been molded by the often-unseen...