The Book That Started It All: The Original Working Manuscript of Alcoholics Anonymous - FIRST PRINTING

The Book That Started It All

The Original Working Manuscript of Alcoholics Anonymous

First Printing · September 2010 · Oversized “Table-Top” Hardcover

Still Sealed in Original Shrinkwrap

Overview

Offered here is a First Edition copy of The Book That Started It All: The Original Working Manuscript of Alcoholics Anonymous — a stunning, oversized “table-top” volume that lets you see the Big Book being built in real time.

This isn’t just A.A. history told after the fact. It’s the working manuscript itself—reproduced in large format so you can flip through page after page of the original typescript and the handwritten changes that shaped the final text. For A.A. members, historians, and Big Book students, it’s hard not to get chills: you’re looking at the program in its drafting stage, where words were debated, clarified, tightened, and refined before publication.

Why It’s So Significant (and so unique to experience)

In early 1939, before the First Edition Big Book was printed, Bill W. and other early A.A. founders circulated roughly 400 “loan” copies of the typescript to gather feedback from anyone they thought might understand alcoholism—doctors, clergy, alcoholics, and supporters. As those copies came back, suggestions and revisions were weighed and written directly onto one master copy.

This book reproduces those pages at a size that invites lingering: you can follow the edits—the strike-throughs, insertions, and handwritten notations—like you’re sitting at the table with the early members while they shape what would become the foundational text of Alcoholics Anonymous.

It’s equal parts:

• Primary-source artifact (as close as most of us will ever get to the manuscript)

• Big Book study tool (perfect for comparing “then vs. now”)

• Beautiful display piece (the kind of book guests pick up and can’t put down)

What You’ll See Inside

• Full-size scans of the original working manuscript pages

• Handwritten revisions and markings preserved as they appear on the master copy

• Contextual material and notes from respected A.A. historians to help place what you’re seeing into the larger story of A.A.’s early development

Edition Details

Title: The Book That Started It All: The Original Working Manuscript of Alcoholics Anonymous

Publisher: Hazelden

Publication Year: 2010

Edition: First

Printing: First (September 2010)

Format: Oversized hardcover

ISBN: 978-1-59285-947-4

Condition

New / Sealed. This copy remains unopened in its original shrinkwrap.

Note: Any interior photos shown are from another copy, as this one is still sealed.

Collector Significance

• A major modern reference volume for A.A. historians and Big Book scholars

• Presents the “in-between” stage of the text—between draft and published First Edition

• A genuinely engaging, visual way to experience early A.A. history page by page

• Ideal for display, study, sponsorship conversations, and recovery-history collections

A beautifully produced, highly readable artifact of A.A.’s earliest writing process — the closest thing to flipping through the Big Book’s workshop as it became the book that changed the world.