Favorite books on knives and knife collecting?

Levine's books are good, but it's the 4th Edition that's used the most (and the hardest to find). David Darom's are the prettiest (and most likely to make you realize you can't keep up with the Jones's). How to Make Knives by Loveless is a must read, and the partner volume How to Make Folding knives by Ron Lake is too. (Those guys are arguably the best in the game.) The "Bladesmithing" series by Sanders (8 books) is a modern classic.

There are so many choices...

The first really good book I read was Ken Boye's book on making knives, and it's still on my bookshelf.
 
Knife Engineering by Larrin, The Book of the Sword by Richard F. Burton (first published in 1884, and still great) and Whittling and Woodcarving, by E. .J. Tangerman.
 
Levine's Guide is still the gold standard as far as general knife reading. 4th is best. 3 and 2 are worth it for the custom knife pictures, and info, if you collect old handmades.

"The Working Folding Knife" by Steven Dick was a very nice bit of knife writing.

The M H Cole military knives books are still the big books on military knives. Knife World's "Military Knives" book is a nice fun read too. Silvey's books are nice too. You can also read through the archives at www.usmilitaryknives.com ( scroll down to the index link at the bottom ) , and get a good education on military stuff. Frank Trzaska is one of the best knife writers working today.

Knife World ( now Knife Magazine ) is a great source for very good knife books, they tend to still stock a lot of out of print titles - https://www.knifemagazine.com/ .

The "Guns and Ammo Guidebook to Knives" (blue cover) is a great look at knife culture up until the 70's.

Ken Warner's Practical Knife Guide is a great read on knives up till the 70's too. Ken Warner was a good writer / editor on the subject. The Knives annuals were very good under his wing.

I note that Blade Magazine is offering CD-ROMs and PDF collections of their magazines now. I wish more magazines would do that. Love them or hate them, magazines were a big part of knife culture, and they covered a lot of stuff the books miss.

Norm Flayderman's The Bowie Knife book is a great book on the subject.

Ron Flook's writing is great on older British and European military knives.

D E Henry's Collins Bowies and Machetes is a book on the subject and machetes in general.

Those are some of the more general books I reach for when looking up knives.
 
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Zinio offers various related subscribtions you can view online, l got Blade, some survival title and Recoil, all of them are fairly inexpensive per year.
 
I have the Spyderco Story and that is a good book if you like Spyderco.
 
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