Pass It on: The Story of Bill Wilson and How the A.A. Message Reached the World

I can't say enough about Bill W. & Dr. Bob. Anyone who is a member of A.A. or any 12 Step Recovery Program will enjoy this book. Without Bill, we wouldn't have A.A., the Steps or Principles. A.A. has saved so many lives where nothing else could relieve those a slave to booze. Bill was a fascinating human being. Far from perfect, but who is? I really enjoyed this book.

This must read book in the AA arsenal is purely an unbiased in depth study of "Bill's Story", and the growth of the Alcoholics Anonymous fellowship.

This book was published in 1984 by the author, A.A. World Services. No individual author is named (or is "anonymous"). The book is a bit difficult to get through, partly because it includes many details, excerpts from letters and journals by Bill Wilson, his wife, and other close friends, and associates. In all, however, the book presents a balanced description of Bill's life. The negative is included along with the positive. I am not an alcoholic, but I am a former substance abuse counselor, who has attended many A.A. and Narcotics Anonymous (N.A.) meetings, beginning in 1974, through the mid-1990s. The name, Bill W., was mentioned frequently during these sessions, but I never had any concept of just who Bill W. was, until I read this book. As reported in Chapter 23 of the book, Aldous Huxley called Bill "the greatest social architect of the century." That is high praise from a respected writer and thinker, and it elicits other questions, such as, "Who were the top ten social architects of the 20th century?" Bill would have to be included, whether #1 or not. Bill certainly had his problems and personality quirks. I was surprised to learn that he had taken LSD, under the auspices of the experimenters Osmond and Hoffer, and for a time went around touting the drug as a possible cure for alcoholism. He stopped when Timothy Leary took over the role. One area in which the book could have been improved was in explaining the Oxford Group, the forerunner of A.A. I had to search the Internet to find out exactly what the Oxford Group was and how it related to the beginning of A.A. Otherwise, Bill W. comes forth in this book as a very human, and humane, individual, yet an individual who never really lost his "craving for the limelight." As Bill believed, "To lose one's bid for the limelight could be as disastrous as to win it" [for alcoholics, and for others as well] (page 307). It was this "limelight craving" that caused Bill to so strongly emphasize anonymity, reliance on "principles and ideas" rather than personal achievement. It came to my mind that Bill might have gone even further toward pure anonymity: He might have insisted on no names at all, including given names, such as "Bill," and no surname initials. Then, everyone would really be anonymous and would necessarily truly avoid the limelight, but who wants to be known only as "hey you," or "number five"? It reminds me of Don Adams in Get Smart, who was he, "Agent 86"? Anyway, it's just too bad, I think, that Bill and Lois didn't have their own children. Why they did not was never explained in this book. Diximus.