Author of the infamous ‘Anarchists Cookbook’ dead at 66

By Brian Seay

“Anarchist Cookbook” author William Powell in Jan. 1971. (Photo: JP Laffont/Sygma-Corbis)
Author of the infamous Anarchist Cookbook, William Powell, died of a heart attack last July at the age of 66, but the news went largely unreported until a new documentary, American Anarchist, noted his death at the end of the film.
Powell was 19 years old when he started studying military manuals and writing his guide for revolutionary mayhem at the New York Public Library’s main branch in Manhattan in 1969. Two years later, the book was published, eventually selling more than two million copies. By 1976, Powell had converted to Christianity and began his fight to remove the Cookbook from circulation. Having never held the copyright to the work, he was unsuccessful in that decades long effort, and watched as several criminals studied the book and used the information to murder people.
“Every man in a guerrilla band should have as part of his basic equipment a handgun,” wrote Powell in chapter three of the Cookbook, where he outlined the features and pricing of several handguns and rifles. He would go on to explain how to convert a shotgun into a grenade launcher, and how to build a silencer.
“As almost everyone

Source: Guns.com