Personally, this was one of the more interesting books I think I’ve read. If you told me at the beginning of the year I’d be in a class where I got to read about how to grow weed and make TNT, I would’ve laughed…but here we are. As I was doing a bit of research on this book, I found it interesting to learn that William Powell wrote it when he was only 19 and now regrets it’s publication. What was supposed to be a recipe book for average Americans to protect themselves against the government, turned into a tool that criminals and terrorists used for exploitation and villainous acts against other common folk. The reasons that Powell wrote this book also served as a point of interest, as it was a catalyst for his frustration about US involvement in the Vietnam war.
Going into the text itself for a moment here, I found the prefatory note by P.M. Bergman very wordy and hard to follow in most spots. However, it did give me insight into certain aspects of anarchism that I was otherwise unfamiliar with. The point made that stood out to me most was the fact that anarchism was supposed to be a nonviolent movement, which contrasts heavily with what is spread in the media about anarchism even today. Moving on to the foreword written by Powell, I found it interesting that the main purpose of the book was to educate the masses instead of being a call to action. Powell also discussed the fact that the idea of a Revolution in his mind is bringing America back to “how she was 200 years ago,” which would’ve been right around the time America was founded as its own country. This made me wonder if he meant the time when we first established our own government and founded the ideals of Democracy in America.
Regardless of what he meant by that point, the rest of the book is just wild. Powell describes how to make just about anything illegal, which also brings into question just how he knows all of this. This is indeed a recipe book, like you want to learn the best way to ingest coke? Here’s a step-by-step breakdown on which method works best. Need a silencer for a pistol? Here’s the exact steps on making one. It’s such a wild thing to read through, and it baffles me that this book is still in circulation to this day. Despite many criminals citing the book as inspiration for things, it still has not been banned due to issues surrounding free speech, which just brings up another discussion on what books have the properties that allow banning in certain states but that’s a conversation for another day. Overall, these are some wild things to just put in a book for the public to have, and I can see why he might regret writing this as he grew up in life.