The Anarchist Cookbook, first published in 1971, is a book containing instructions for the manufacture of explosives, rudimentary telecommunications phreaking devices, and related weapons, as well as instructions for the home manufacture of illicit drugs, including LSD. It was written by William Powell at the apex of the counterculture era to protest against the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War. Powell converted to Anglicanism in 1976 and later attempted to have the book removed from circulation. However, the copyright belonged to the publisher, who continued circulating the book until the company was bought out in 1991. Its legality has been questioned in several jurisdictions.
History
Creation The Anarchist Cookbook was written by William Powell as a teenager and first published in 1971 at the apex of the counterculture era to protest against the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War. Powell gained inspiration for his text from his experiences with Vietnam veterans while living in New York City, during which time the pacifist movements of the 1960s began to take a more violent turn. Powell began plans to become a writer but decided upon a political course when he was drafted into the Vietnam war, which inspired him to write "recipes" and later compile them into a "cookbook". The initial vision of The Anarchist Cookbook was to post instructional flyers in New York City, including how to properly throw a Molotov cocktail and how to make LSD. These "recipes" were eventually adapted to make up an entire book. From 1968 to 1970, Powell began researching in the "U.S. Combat Bookshelf" at the New York Public Library, including mainstream external texts such as The Boy Scout Handbook, and anarchist texts like Fuck the System by Abbie Hoffman. The initial manuscript was sent to Lyle Stuart in 1970. Powell stated The Anarchist Cookbook was initially designed as a book meant to provide education to "the silent majority" of the American population. He described that the book was not intended for extant political fringe organizations but was designed to galvanize a great societal change by inciting the general population. The ultimate goal of the text was to provide the general population with the skills and capabilities to organize against fascist, capitalist, and communist threats. Powell stated: "The central idea to the book was that violence is an acceptable means to bring about political change", a sentiment that he would renounce later in life.
Author's remorse
After writing the book as a teenager, Powell converted to Anglicanism in 1976 and later attempted to have the book removed from circulation. In 1979, Powell left the US, traveling to the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia. He worked as a faculty member for international schools backed by the US. During this time, he began writing about pedagogy and conflict resolution. This led him to renounce his book and instead campaign for its withdrawal from publication. He was unable to legally stop the publication of The Anarchist Cookbook because the copyright had been issued to the original publisher Lyle Stuart, and subsequent publishers that purchased the rights have kept the title in print. Powell publicly renounced his book in a 2013 piece calling for the book to "quickly and quietly go out of print". Powell had difficulty finding employment throughout his life, having described the book as "a youthful indiscretion or mistake that can haunt someone during their early years or even longer." In 2011, Powell and his wife, Ochan Kusuma-Powell, founded Next Frontier: Inclusion, a non-profit organization for children with developmental disabilities and learning disabilities; he described it as a means to atone for writing the text. William Powell died of cardiac arrest on 11 July 2016.
Publication status Powell originally sent the manuscript to over 30 publishers until Lyle Stuart bought the book and its copyright. Powell received royalties for the book, approximately $35,000 until he split with the company in 1976. Despite Powell's protest against the continued publication of the text, the copyright of the book never belonged to its author, but to its publisher, Lyle Stuart Inc. The publisher agreed to publish the text as an attempt to defy efforts by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to obtain lists of people who checked out books that were deemed subversive. Stuart kept publishing the book until the company was bought in 1991 by Steven Schragis, who decided to drop it. Out of the 2,000 books published by the company, it was the only one that Schragis decided to stop publishing. Schragis said publishers have a responsibility to the public, and the book had no positive social purpose that could justify keeping it in print. The copyright was bought in 2002 by Delta Press (a.k.a. Ozark Press), an Arkansas-based publisher that specializes in controversial books, where the title is their "most-asked-for volume". As of 2016, over two million copies of the book have been sold.
Content summary
Foreword The Anarchist Cookbook begins with a Foreword section, detailing the author's intentions for the text. At the time of writing, Powell believed that the United States was slowly declining towards communism, thus he found it necessary to write a book that guided people on revolution against this transition. He championed the idea of "bringing America back to where she was two hundred years ago", believing his revolutionary ideals to be reactive, rather than proactive. Powell begins with his vision for the book in how it is intended to educate and galvanize the public to make tangible change in their home countries. Powell states that fringe political organizations, such The Minutemen and The Weathermen, are not the intended audience, rather it is written for "the silent majority". Powell envisioned the people of the United States rebelling against what he deemed to be oppressive capitalistic ideals, and to a lesser extent, against fascist and communist movements.
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