Murray Bookchin (January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006) was an American libertarian socialist, political and social philosopher, speaker and writer. For much of his life he called himself an anarchist, although as early as 1995 he privately renounced his identification with the anarchist movement. A pioneer in the ecology movement, Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics, philosophy, history, and urban affairs as well as ecology.