By the Carload
The Big Book
How a few dozen sober drunks wrote, paid for and very nearly failed to sell the book that gave AA its name.
“If the Digest runs an article about us, we will sell those books by the carloads.”
Late in 1937, the alcoholics who would become AA had no name, no money and about forty sober members, most of them in Akron and New York. Eighteen months later they had a book. Its title gave the fellowship its name, and its first chapters are still where AA’s program is written down.
The Kitchen Table tells the headline version. This piece goes underneath it: a vote in Akron that barely passed, a publishing company with stock certificates from a stationery store, a chapter for wives written by a husband, 400 loan copies, 5,000 books printed for a magazine article that never ran, and twelve postcards. Legacy follows the shares back into AA’s hands.
It’s built chiefly from Bill W.’s own account in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, with Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, Lois W.’s memoir Lois Remembers, the book itself and AA’s short history of it, and outside historians. Bill wrote his account eighteen years after the events, and the others remembered some things differently. Where the sources disagree, these pages say so.
Start with 1 · The barest majorityThe book, year by year
- 1937In Akron, Bill W. and Dr. Bob count about forty alcoholics staying sober, and the members vote, barely, for a book.
- 1938Bill starts dictating the book in Newark. Works Publishing offers shares at $25. In December he writes the Twelve Steps.
- 1939Four hundred loan copies go out early in the year. In April the book comes out at $3.50, and sits in the warehouse. In September a Liberty article brings 800 letters.
- 1940AA’s trustees buy back every share, the last of them for a desk and a chair.
- 1941A Saturday Evening Post article makes a second printing necessary.
- 1955The second edition, with the Twelve Traditions and many new stories.
- 1967The first edition’s copyright runs out unrenewed, putting it in the public domain in the United States.
- 1976The third edition.
- 2001The fourth edition.
- 2026AA’s General Service Conference approves a fifth edition, with 26 new stories, due in February 2027.
Seven parts and Legacy
Walk through the making of the book
Each part has a short story, a one-minute audio stop, and a closer look for anyone who wants to go deeper. Read them in order, or start anywhere.
New to the story? The Kitchen Table tells how AA began, from one drunk talking to another to millions around the world.
Watch The Kitchen Table