The Ultimate Sniper by Major John Plaster is a classic in it's field and rightly so. For years it has been the best and only complete training manual about sniping. There have been other books on the market that have covered some aspects of sniping in more detail and perhaps even better that the Ultimate Sniper, but none have covered the whole subject matter as well as Plaster's book. The original is a hefty 453 pages with many useful illustrations, charts and pictures, the updated and expanded version has 120 pages more making a total of 573 pages. Many of drawings and pictures form the old version have found their way to the expanded version as well. A lot of the photos have been switched to more current ones. Curiously enough, some of the great illustrations that can be found on the original have not made it to the updated version. For example the great full page drawing explaining the dimensions and relations of the mil-dot reticules is missing.

Because the original was written in the early 90's an update was certainly due even though many of the basic techniques have not changed much. The equipment however has evolved significantly since the original was written and that alone is reason enough for an update.

As for new content, there is only one completely new chapter in the book. Despite the title, Counter sniping in Iraq covers sniping in recent history from Sarajevo to Afghanistan. The "Counter sniping in Iraq" is only 18 pages long, so most of the additional pages have been used on extending the original 22 chapters.

All in all this is still "The book" If you are going to get only one book about sniping, this is the one. We were planning on giving it a rating of 4½ stars but once we found out that Sniperworld.com is mentioned at the end we just had to bump it up to 5.