In the closing year of the 1960s, with the positivity and warm buzz of 1967's "summer of love" fading into memory, youthful tempers across the US were fraying. With no end in sight to the unpopular war in Vietnam, more than a few followers of the counter-cultural movement, who only months earlier had espoused peace and brotherly love, had become increasingly antsy.
In 1968 and 1969, more than 100 politically motivated bombings were reported across the country. The son of a UN press officer, 19-year-old William Powell was just another peacenik and wannabe writer barely surviving in New York City. When he received his draft card, the idea that he could soon be drawn into a war that he regularly protested against suddenly became real, and he felt inspired to write something in retaliation: . "I was very angry," Powell said later.
Released in 1971, the 160-page broadside has been described as "the original guide to everything illegal", and sold worldwide. Suddenly, young malcontents had their bible of rebellion: Powell laid out - step by step - everything one needed to know about making explosives and illegal drugs, hiding from the authorities, and carrying out guerilla warfare and terrorism.
His rant is broken into four chapters - drugs; electronics, sabotage and surveillance; natural, non-lethal and lethal weapons; and explosives and booby traps - with more than 100 crude illustrations. It is packed with tips on making pipe bombs and TNT, synthesising LSD, how to behead somebody using piano wire, how to make a knife "slip off the rib cage and penetrate the heart", and more.
In the introduction, Powell expressed his desire that the be seen as a genuine recipe for insurrection: "I hold a sincere hope that it may stir some stagnant brain cells into action."
Though it is likely Powell's book was, for most readers, a cheeky two fingers up to "the man", law enforcement agencies have linked to real acts of terrorism, including bombings of abortion clinics and police headquarters, hijackings and arson attacks in the US and elsewhere. As recently as 2010, British white supremacists allegedly drew upon the book to make highly toxic ricin.
In a letter posted on the Amazon website, Powell, now 60, writes: "The central idea to the book was that violence is an acceptable means to bring about political change. I no longer agree with this."
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