Wrong Hands

Ann Larabee

"In 1885, there was The Science of Revolutionary Warfare. In 1971, there was The Anarchist Cookbook. In 2012, the Boston Marathon bombers turned to the Internet to learn how to make explosives. For well over a century, the United States government has regarded the circulation of weapons manuals and instruction booklets by radicals as not only dangerous, but criminal. In The Wrong Hands, Ann Larabee traces the nuanced history of do-it-yourself weapons manuals from the late nineteenth century to the present to explain the trajectory of violent radicalism and how it provokes the state's evolving policy toward radical dissent. Larabee begins with Johann Most's The Science of Revolutionary Warfare, which allegedly served as a cookbook for the accused Haymarket Square bombers of 1886. The judge at the Haymarket trial allowed it to be admitted as evidence, setting a precedent for...