Akron and Cleveland · 1939–1944
Once the book was out, newcomers were told to read it and read it again, and handed a list of other books to read beside it.
“Read Alcoholics Anonymous and then read it again. … It will become your second Bible.”
Before the book, Akron’s alcoholics had the Bible and a few devotional books (855 Ardmore, in I Just Work Here, tells those years). The book that came out in April 1939 told members what to do with it. When a prospect seemed interested, “ask him to read this book in the interval.” That June, Clarence S., who had started Cleveland’s first meeting, described the routine there: “After he is defogged, we feel him out, then give him the book and lots of conversation.”
In Akron the book came with a test. John S., new in Akron AA in January 1940, remembered Dr. Bob asking him early on, “You got any dough?” The money was for the book. Once John had read it, Dr. Bob came back to quiz him. “It was like a second-grade teacher coming in and asking about the lesson.” Then he asked when John was going to take the Steps. By then, John said, Dr. Bob no longer had new men get out of bed and kneel to pray with him.
Akron’s first group, meeting at the King School by then, put what it had learned into a pamphlet for newcomers, A Manual for Alcoholics Anonymous (Full responsibility, in You Had to Be Sponsored, tells what it asked of sponsors). It sent the man in the hospital to his Bible first: “There is the Bible that you haven’t opened for years. Get acquainted with it.” Then to the book, and then to the book again. About the Steps it said almost nothing: “Thousands of words could be written on each rule. Lack of space prevents, so they are merely listed here.” His sponsor was to explain them.
Or he could send to a post office box in Akron for a second pamphlet, A Guide to the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, at 12 cents a copy. It called itself “a simple, short and concise interpretation,” drawn from “instruction classes conducted by veteran members of AA.” It took Steps Six and Seven together, and Eight and Nine. It gave a four-line short form for the reader to try on a newcomer of his own, his “baby.” And on the Thee and Thou of King James prayers, it said: “If you don’t like it don’t use it.”
Other places leaned on the book alone. In Los Angeles, Bill W. wrote in 1957, Mort J. “insisted on a reading from Chapter 5 of the A.A. book at the start of every session” (No form letters, in Jittery and Alone, tells how Mort got there). By 1941, Bill wrote, AA was getting by on travelers, letters from its office, “one pamphlet, and one book.” In 1944 Cleveland’s pamphlet for sponsors still put the book first: “Explain the necessity of reading and re-reading the A.A. book.”
It’s January 1940, in Akron, Ohio. A new man named John S. wants to do something about his drinking, and Dr. Bob comes to see him with a question. Does he have any money? It’s for the book.
The Big Book has been out since April. John reads it, and Dr. Bob comes back to quiz him on it, like a teacher checking the lesson. Then he asks when John is going to take the Steps.
Akron’s members write down what they’ve learned in a pamphlet for newcomers. Read your Bible, it says, and read the book, and then read it again. It will become your second Bible. About the Twelve Steps it says almost nothing. There isn’t room. Your sponsor will explain them.
One early member remembers that every well-equipped AA bathroom had a copy of a little daily booklet, The Upper Room. And if it wasn’t open to the right day, you began to wonder about the man who lived there.
Beside the book
“The following literature has helped many members of Alcoholics Anonymous,” the Akron manual said, and listed ten titles. Here they are, with the daily booklet it told newcomers to read each morning.
Titles as the manual printed them, in the copies transcribed online. Years are first publication. What early members made of each book is from Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers.
1939
The book itself, first on the list. Dr. Bob asked John S. whether he had the money for it, and in Cleveland Warren C. had to read it before his first meeting.
“It will become your second Bible”
The Akron manual; Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers
Scripture
The manual named the passages: the Sermon on the Mount, St. Paul on love in First Corinthians 13, the Book of James, and Psalms 23 and 91. Dr. Bob later called the first three “absolutely essential” to the earliest members.
The first thing the manual sent a newcomer to
The Akron manual; Dr. Bob
1935
A Methodist devotional from Nashville, with a page for each day: a verse, a reading, a prayer, a thought for the day. Not on the list, but the manual told the newcomer home from the hospital, “You will read the Upper Room, or whatever you think best for yourself.” Speakers at Akron’s King School meeting often took their subject from it.
Dorothy S. M.; the Akron manual; upperroom.org
1890
A Scottish evangelist’s address on First Corinthians 13. For a woman coming out of the D.T.’s, Dr. Bob told Dorothy S. M.: “Tell her to read it through every day for 30 days, and she’ll be a different woman.”
One of Dorothy’s “three main books”
Dorothy S. M.
1934
A New Thought minister’s reading of Matthew 5 to 7, first published in 1934 by most accounts (some listings give 1938). “That was required reading for everybody,” Dorothy S. M. said. Men in the hospital got a copy as soon as they “could begin to focus their eyes.”
The first book Dr. Bob got Dorothy
Dorothy S. M.
1903
A short book by an English writer, its title from Proverbs. When Nancy, his waitress at Akron’s City Club, lost her temper and threw a cracker basket, Dr. Bob sent her a copy the next day, with The Runner’s Bible.
One Dr. Bob gave away
Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers
1942
Daily devotions by a Methodist missionary to India. Nobody in the record says who read it in Akron. It matters for another reason: it came out in 1942, so the manual as it survives was printed in 1942 or later.
A clue to the manual’s date
Open Library; Glenn C., 2011
1925–1938
The Self You Have to Live With, Winfred Rhoades; Psychology of Christian Personality, Ernest M. Ligon; The Man Nobody Knows, Bruce Barton (“Bruce Barron” in the copies online); and The Unchanging Friend, “a series” from a Catholic publisher in Milwaukee, of which Glenn C. wrote in 2011, “unfortunately we know nothing about what it taught.”
Ten titles in all
The Akron manual; library records
For a closer look
Why the Akron manual is probably later than its usual date; what Akron called the Steps; and the members who didn’t read.
The copies of the Akron manual shared online usually carry the date 1940. A 2002 note with one of them passes on an earlier transcriber’s word that it was written within a year of the Big Book. Full responsibility, in You Had to Be Sponsored, says histories date it 1940 or 1941.
The text as it survives points later. Its reading list includes Abundant Living, first published in 1942. It speaks of “the dozen or more Akron groups,” and Akron’s first group only moved to the King School in January 1940. It already advertises the 12-cent Guide.
In 2011 the AA historian Glenn C., who had edited the 2002 transcription, wrote that it was “published in Akron in 1942 or not long afterwards.” A dealer listed a copy as an early-1940s second edition. Either a first edition read differently, or the date is wrong. No source found here describes a first edition.
The 1939 book called its Steps “suggested as a Program of Recovery.” Akron’s manual called them laws and rules, and warned: “Those who gloss over or ignore any one rule are in constant danger of returning to a life of drunkenness.”
The Guide called them “the rules for sober living,” then offered a four-line short form for beginners and told readers they could drop the Thee and Thou of the King James Bible.
In 1948 Dr. Bob wrote that the Steps were plain enough to need no interpreting (Leave the words alone, in part 4, has his words).
Norman Y., who was blind, arranged a Braille edition of the Big Book in 1940, and the Cleveland library mailed it to other blind members. “There were 19 of us corresponding back then,” he said. He never read it himself. “I never read a word in A.A.,” he said. “You don’t have to read.”
In San Francisco in 1940, Ray W., a New York member and an atheist, gathered a few prospects at his hotel and told them, as Bill W. remembered it, “So when you read this book, you can skip that part of it,” meaning the part about God. He went home ten days later, Bill wrote, leaving “a shivering and divided group.”
Most newcomers couldn’t afford the book. In Cleveland, Dorothy S. M. remembered, New York sent copies ten or fifteen at a time, and members handed them out in hope of being paid. “Some did—very few.”