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 prosecutorial use of such texts against radicals. Health Is in You!, a bombmaking guide circulated by Italian anarchists, further attracted the attention of federal police, and sabotage books were introduced in show trials of labor activists. In the 1960s, small paramilitary publishers produced instructions, largely drawn from US military sources, to cater to a growing popular interest in do-it-yourself weapons making. Published in 1971, The Anarchist Cookbook achieved legendary status and a lasting presence in the courts. The book''s critics immediately connected it to the wave of bombings by left-wing radicals of the era, particularly the Weather Underground. Novelistic instructions for bombmaking, as in Edward Abbey''s The Monkey Wrench Gang and William Pierce''s The Turner Diaries, provided controversial evidence in prosecutions of radicals on the left and right, including Earth Firsters and Timothy McVeigh. Over the last twenty years, sites have proliferated online explaining how to make weapons, including suicide vests, and older print instructions have been digitized. The struggle over the state''s responsibility to police such information has long hinged on whether its disseminators are legitimate. An unevenly applied federal terror policy has increased the penalties for possessing popular weapons instructions if those instructions end up in ''the wrong hands'' like right-wing militia figures and jihadists (including the Boston Marathon bombers). Larabee ends with an analysis of the 1979 publication of instructions to make a nuclear weapon, which raises the ultimate question: can a society committed to free speech allow these sorts of manuals to disseminate freely? A comprehensive account of an alarming yet persistent historical phenomenon, The Wrong Hands will reshape our understanding of radical violence and state repression in American history.
Industry Reviews
"A fascinating work of historical recovery and textual discovery. Ann Larabee asks hard questions about violence, terrorism, and free speech, and demands that we look to history to help sort out the answers."
--Beverly Gage, Professor of History, Yale University, and author of The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror
"Larabee's brilliant, groundbreaking history explores fascinating and profound questions about freedom and dangerous information. Ranging from the 19th century anarchists to al-Qaeda and the Boston marathon bombers, The Wrong Hands is invaluable for understanding both the terrorist threat and the threat to civil liberties posed by overreacting to terrorism."
--Richard Bach Jensen, author of The Battle against Anarchist Terrorism: An International History, 1878-1934
"One of our best writers, Ann Larabee, brings extensive research and splendid prose to bear on a topic that is vital to democracy-how to regulate, if at all, speech that contains instructions for weapons and violence. With essential detail and sharp analysis, Larabee discusses the history of weapons manuals, the political use of technical information, the wide variety of governmental responses, the constitutional and moral issues at stake, and the challenges
of the digital age. She makes a strong argument that in the contest between suppression and tolerance the legitimacy of government itself can become problematic."
--Steven S. Smith, Kate M. Gregg Distinguished Professor of Social Science and Professor of Political Science, Washington University
"To date, The Wrong Hands is not only the most comprehensive book on the history of bomb making in the U.S. as tied to instructional manuals, but it also digs into corners and places the average person could not go, providing a thoughtful narrative about balancing the nation's constitutional rights and protections." --Lansing City Pulse
"Today, the internet and social media provide unprecedented opportunities for non-violent critics, actual terrorists and government officials alike to perpetuate their positions indefinitely. The Wrong Hands brilliantly guides us through these challenges to American democracy." --Times Higher Education
"For well over a century the United States government has regarded the circulation of weapons manuals and instruction booklets as dangerous and criminal. Ann Larabee traces the nuanced history of do-it-yourself weapons manuals from the late nineteenth century to the present to explain their role in the state's evolving policy toward radical dissent. The book covers a wide variety of topics from The Anarchist Cookbook to Edward Abbey's novel The Monkey Wrench
Gang, which have been accused of inspiring domestic terrorists. It is an interesting look at the battle between free speech and the right of the public to have access to information that could be
dangerous in the wrong hands." -- Skeptical Inquirer
"An entertaining, enlightening book on what happens when restricted information gets into the hands of the 'wrong people.' Highly recommended." --Choice
"The core of The Wrong Hands is not so much about the existence of these weapons and explosives manuals or their actual historical use by various American radicals from the 19th century until today, however. It is, instead, much more about the heated arguments over the publication, distribution, or possession of these manuals - a conflict of First Amendment/free expression principles and domestic security and law enforcement concerns....The Wrong
Hands ough to be of interest to many lawfare readers"
--Kenneth Anderson, Lawfare Blog
"Meticulously researched, often illuminating, always thought-provoking,
Ann Larabee's The Wrong Hands is a nuanced and essential supplement to
our understanding of the complexities of how dissent, and efforts to repress it,
has shaped the United States."
--Journal for the Study of Radicalism
