Thirty-six months in combat. Twenty-four years as a sniping instructor. Twenty years of exhaustive research, including decades spent seeking out hundreds of historic volumes long out of print, test-firing historic firearms, walking Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields with a laser rangefinder, and visiting military museums in the United States and Europe. Only Major John Plaster, author of the highly acclaimed The Ultimate Sniper, has the background and knowledge to bring you this authoritative history of sniping and sharpshooting – the first such book from a combat rifleman's unique perspective.

In The History of Sniping and Sharpshooting, John Plaster has assembled the most comprehensive combat history ever published on the subject. It begins in the 15th century, with the first use of ''precision'' musket fire in Europe and continues into the 21st century with the significant role sniping is playing the Iraq and Afghanistan and the global War on Terror. Detailing major engagements and minor skirmishes over five centuries of warfare, Plaster has unearthed hundreds of incidents where calculated precision rifle fire has changed the course of battles – and, sometimes, history. He fittingly addresses well-known sharpshooters and snipers – Hiram Berdan, Vasili Zaitsev, Carlos Hathcock – but also pays tribute to forgotten riflemen such as John Burns, Benjamin Forsyth and Arthur Wermuth, to name but a few. He also explains how the evolution of firearms and optical technology has intertwined with sniping on the battlefield and how it has influenced tactics, organizations, and capabilities – a subject that has never before been address adequately.