65 93ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS. Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism. New York, 1939. Thick octavo, original red cloth. $18,500 First edition, first printing, of the influential AA “Big Book.” The Alcoholics Anonymous “Big Book” first saw print at a particularly trying time; the Great Depression had driven many Americans to desperation, and the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 meant that alcohol was readily available. With moving personal accounts and case histories of many original members of AA, here is the story of countless “average Americans… [whose] feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds” their lives together. This extremely scarce first edition also examines the epiphanic moments in which hope for a new life is achieved; “later editions of the Big Book play down this expectation of ‘sudden and spectacular upheaval’ in favor of a more gradual explanation for triumph over the addiction” (New Yorker, 1955). An alternative title, The Way Out, had strong support from members, but a check of the Library of Congress showed 12 books with that title. Bill W. remembers, “We said to ourselves, ‘We sure aren’t going to make this book the 13th Way Out.’ We left the title Alcoholics Anonymous in the copy that went to the printer. That is how we got the title for our book, and that is how our society got its name.” Without very rare original dust jacket. Interior fresh and near-fine, rear inner paper hinge split; cloth bright and unfaded with two ink marks to front board, minimal faint soiling to rear panel. An exceptionally nice copy. Extraordinarily Rare First Printing Of Alcoholics Anonymous, 1939
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