William Ralph Powell was born in Roslyn, Long Island, New York on December 6, 1949. In late 1969, he was working at a bookstore in Greenwich Village when he decided to quit his job to research and write The Anarchist Cookbook. At the time, he was angry at the government and the Vietnam War. The Anarchist Cookbook, a diagram- and recipe-filled manifesto, is believed to have been used as a source in heinous acts of violence since its publication in 1971 including the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, the Columbine High School shootings in 1999, and the attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona in 2011. He received a bachelor's degree from Windham College and a master's degree in English from Manhattanville College. His early teaching career focused on children with emotional and learning needs. He moved overseas in 1979 and worked in Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Indonesia, and Malaysia, where he taught marginalized children and trained teachers in how to better include them in the classroom. He eventually renounced the book and expressed his regret about writing it. He died of a heart attack on July 11, 2016 at the age of 66. A documentary about him, American Anarchist, was released in 2017.
