David Stone and the "Big Book"

The colorful dust cover of an early printing
of Alcoholics Anonymous

Every newcomer to the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous hears certain suggestions.  They usually include immersing oneself in the textbook that defines the organization, also entitled "Alcoholics Anonymous."  Most members of AA call it simply the "Big Book."  (Many years ago, I attended an AA spiritual retreat in southern California.  The moderator, a Roman Catholic priest from Alabama, picked up the New Testament to read a passage.  He said, "This is the original "big book." )

As a newcomer to AA, I took the message seriously and read and re-read the book, which describes "The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism."  I also wanted to know how and when the book got written.  I learned much of the story from the foreword to the 1st edition.  Bill W. and Dr. Bob, the two men credited with founding AA, had been instrumental in producing the initial manuscript supplemented by the stories of many early AA members.  I also found narratives the origins of the book in some histories of AA that had been published.

A current pamphlet published by AA's World Headquarters describes it nicely, "In May 1938, when Bill W. began work on the first draft of what is now the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, in New York City and Newark, New Jersey, he had been sober about three and a half years.  Dr. Bob was sober a few months less than three years, and the other 100 early members who contributed in one way or another to the writing of the book had been sober for periods ranging from a couple of years to a couple of months.  The early members realized the book would need a “story” section.  “We would have to produce evidence in the form of living proof, written testimonials of our membership itself.  It was felt also that the story section could identify us with the distant reader in a way that the text itself might not.”  Dr. Bob and the members in Akron, Ohio led this effort.  One member of the Akron Group was a former newspaperman with two years of sobriety, named Jim.  He and Dr. Bob “went after all the Akronites who had substantial sobriety records for testimonial material.  In most cases Jim interviewed the prospects and wrote their stories for them.  Dr. Bob wrote his own.”  By January, the Akron Group had come up with 18 stories.  In New York, where there was no one with writing expertise, they decided that each member with substantial sobriety would write his own story.  When Bill and a fellow member turned to edit these “amateur attempts,” there were objections.  “Who were we, said the writers, to edit their stories?  That was a good question, but still we did edit them.  The cries of the anguished edited tale tellers finally subsided and the story section of the book was complete in the latter part of January 1939.  So, at last, was the text.”  The book still lacked a title.  “The Akron and New York groups had been voting for months on possible titles.  This had become an after-the-meeting form of amusement and interest.  The title ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ had appeared very early in the discussion….  We do not know who first used these words.  After we New Yorkers had left the Oxford Groups in 1937 we often described ourselves as a ‘nameless bunch of alcoholics.’  From this phrase it was only a step to the idea of ‘Alcoholics Anonymous.’”  More than 100 titles were considered, but in the end, it came down to “Alcoholics Anonymous” or “The Way Out,” and when the two groups voted, “The Way Out” received a slight majority.  At this point, one of the A.A.s visited the Library of Congress to research the number of books titled “The Way Out” versus those called “Alcoholics Anonymous.”  There were 12 with the former title, none with the latter, and since nobody wanted to make the book the thirteenth “Way Out,” the problem was solved.  “That is how we got the title for our book, and that is how our society got its name.”  So, this somewhat shaky, often fearful group of men and women somehow brought to publication, on April 10, 1939, the book Alcoholics Anonymous."

I, like many newly sober members of AA, decided that I would like to acquire an early edition of the Big Book.  I approached my friend David Stone, who owned the Booklegger used book store in Huntsville.  He said that he was certain that early copies of the Big Book were very rare and therefore quite expensive.  David suggested that I contact a gentleman named Charles Bishop, who owned a bookstore in Wheeling, West Virginia, called "The Bishop of Books" that specialized in books about alcoholism and drug addiction.  I promptly called Mr. Bishop and explained my quest.

I suppose Charlie Bishop heard from hundreds of new AA members every year, but he was extremely polite and patient.  He explained that not only the edition is important to establishing the value of an early Big Book, but equally important is the printing.  The book was initially printed in 1939, allegedly in a printing of 5,500 copies.  He suggested that that number probably was an exaggeration and that it was more likely that only around 4,700 of the first printing were really delivered.  Mr. Bishop explained that the book was printed on a pulpy paper, making it look bigger than its number of pages would normally suggest.  It was bound in a rather inexpensive binding that would not hold up well to abuse.  And this was a book that, if properly used, would be read again and again.  Thus, he pointed out, the survival rate of early printings is quite low.  The values are therefore high -- in the thousands of dollars.

He stated that he had one first printing with a broken binding, no dust cover, and substantial marking on the pages, that he had priced around $4,000, and that he had no doubt it would sell at that price.  He had a pristine 1st printing with an inscription from Bill W. to its original owner that was priced around $10,000.  He then explained that the high prices of the first printing have an inflationary effect on the other early printings, all of which were printed in relatively small numbers.

Bill W.

Mr. Bishop's description of the very limited first printing is supported by an article recently published in Fine Books magazine.  The article is entitled "One Day at a Time - How a Rare Books Dealer Came to be an Expert on Alcoholics Anonymous."  The author, William Schaberg, describes the first printing: "With the final edits made, Cornwall Press in upstate New York was contracted to print 5,000 copies of the book. It was only after they were finished that the printers realized that apart from a down-payment, the AA people had no money to pay for the press run. Cornwall ended up stockpiling all of the books and parceling them out to the group on a ‘pay as you go’ basis over the next two years. The first copies of Alcoholics Anonymous arrived in New York City on April 10, 1939. Two weeks after the book was published, the bank foreclosed on Bill’s and Lois’ house in Brooklyn—the site of AA’s earliest meeting in the East—forcing them to live on the charity of their friends for the next two years.

Dr. Bob Smith

Sales of the first printing were painfully slow. It took almost two years to sell all 4,650 copies."

I relayed what I had found out to my friend David and suggested that I probably would never be fortunate enough to own one of these rare, precious early printings of the book that has literally changed and saved millions of lives.  I thought the subject was dead.

A few weeks later, I was at work one morning and received a call from David Stone.  "Are you busy today at lunchtime?" he asked.  I told him I had no plans.  He suggested I drop by the store.  He had "something to show me."  Naturally, at noon, I was at the Booklegger.  David was standing behind his checkout counter.  He reached under the counter and retrieved an obviously over sized version of "Alcoholics Anonymous."  It was in a zip lock bag, but I could see that it had a worn but intact dust jacket.  I looked at the spine and could read the words "Second Printing."  I couldn't believe my eyes!  I told David to put it back under the counter, that it was worth far more than what I could afford.

David insisted that I take the book out of its bag and look at it.  It was absolutely pristine with no pencil markings on any pages.  I asked him how he had gotten it.  He informed me that a regular customer of his had acquired it at a recent estate auction of a prominent southern author.  This client knew that David was looking for an early AA printing.  He had gotten a real bargain which he had passed on to David.  So my friend said he would sell the book to me for $425, far below it's true value.  David knew how precious my sobriety was to me, and this was his way of supporting me in substance and spirit.  I immediately accepted his offer and we worked out a payment plan.

A few years later, David told me the name of the customer who had acquired the book at the estate auction.  It turned out that I knew the individual.  Not long after I found out his name, I happened to bump into him one day at the bank.  I told him that I was the recovering alcoholic who had bought the Big Book from David Stone.  I asked if he would tell me whose estate he had bought the book from.  He advised me that he felt he had to protect the family of the author and refused to give me the name.  On a couple of later occasions, I ran into him again, asked again if he would tell me whose estate the book had been part of, and again he refused to give me that information.

My late wife Margo was a librarian.  One evening as I was expressing my frustration over the individual's secrecy about the source of my Big Book, Margo suggested that we could probably make an educated guess as to the source.   She suggested that we work backwards from the time I acquired the book and figure out what southern authors had died.  I bought the book in early 1985.  As we looked at deaths of southern authors preceding that time, we realized that Truman Capote had passed away in August 1984.  He was known to have had a long history of struggles with drug and alcohol abuse.  So, although I can't document the fact, I believe that my pristine early copy of the Big Book probably belonged at one time to Truman Capote, author of Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood.  I will probably never know for sure.

I still have that Big Book.  It is one of the first 10,000 copies of a book that has now sold over 30,000,000 copies!  That puts my copy in the first 3/100 of a percent of the production history of the book.  I treasure it as a piece of the history of AA that it represents.