Bull’s Eye

Description

When two 7.5-mm rounds were shot point-blank into Gerald Bull’s skull in March 1990, it was the end of a life that had begun with great promise and the beginning of a story that was to shock the world.

Exactly who killed him was not known, but the real mystery was the man himself and his legacy.

Born in Canada, Bull was the youngest person ever to receive a doctorate from the University of Toronto. His particular expertise was measuring the performance of objects in flight.

In the 1960s, he was involved in a joint U.S-Canadian venture to develop huge guns capable of firing satellites into orbit, but his dream of doing so was forced to end when funding for the project was cancelled. Moving away from pure space research, he turned to designing artillery and shells…

It was Bull who secretly designed the first Star Wars system, twenty years before Reagan announced his version.

It was Bull who designed special shells for the Navy to bombard North Vietnam.

In the late 1970s, the CIA encouraged Bull to build a new gun for the South Africans, despite the U.S. arms embargo.

It was artillery designed by Bull that confronted American troops during Operation Desert Storm — artillery that had a longer range than anything comparable in the Allied memory.

In this stunning work of investigative journalism, James Adams combines the excitement and drama of a thriller with a cast of extraordinary characters from the worlds of intelligence, government, and the arms business. This is the story of the most talented designer of artillery this century; a man betrayed, who in despair and anger fell into the world of seedy arms merchants and ambitious third world dictators.