The Language of the Heart

In 1935, two drunks met and talked in the library of a home in Akron, Ohio, and from that single event was to grow a program of recovery for more than two million once-hopeless alcoholics. How did the seed that became Alcoholics Anonymous take root and develop? The articles in this book tell much of that story.

In the Grapevine, A.A.'s international journal, co-founder Bill W., recorded -- and reflected on -- A.A.'s history as it happened. A prolific writer, Bill authored nearly 150 Grapevine articles, from 1944 to the late 1960s and virtually all of them appear here, published for the first time in one volume.

A man of rare energy and action, Bill committed his thoughts to paper with great facility. Yet the principles he derived to unite and sustain this extraordinary fellowship were born of a long and arduous process fo trial and error. In the events and insights he chronicled from A.A.'s pioneer years, sober alcoholics today can find answers to their own struggles and those of thier groups.

Covering a multitued of topics, from the basic principles fo A.A.'s Steps and Traditions to a discussion fo the personal search of many A.A. members for "emotional sobriety," Bill's words hold meaning for A.A. members of any age.

Writing ten years after his first visit to European A.A. with his wife, Lois, in 1950, Bill had this to say: "As we journeyed from land to land, we had the same magnificent adventure in kinship over and over again...Everywhere, everywhere, it was the same...the communication of heart to heart in woder, in joy, and in everlasting grattitude. Lois and I knew then that A.A. could circle the globe -- and it has."

It is the belief fo the Grapevine editors that the fundamental A.A. experience expressed here will illuminate every facet of A.A. -- a way of life that has, over the years, helped one suffering alcoholic to communicate with another in "the language of the heart."