The Annotated AA Handbook: A Companion to the Big Book

I have tried to be a careful student of the Big Book for many years. It is the most important book in my life. This volume is an invaluable tool for studying the Big Book. It's comments are clear, insightful, and helpful. It is clearly the product of years of study. The author keeps the comments brief, accurate and writes with style of deep humility that comes from practicing this program over time. I rate this book as one of the top three tools to study the Big Book. The other two are Joe and Charlie tapes and e-AA, an electronic vesion of the Big Book with concordance, subject index, original manuscript etc from anonpress.org.

This is the best step workbook available. It has helped me gain a much deeper and broader knowledge of the 12 Steps and the program of recovery suggested by AA. I heartily recommend this book.

I have always found the meaning of the text of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous hard to decipher but Frank D's book provides excellent reference notes that explain the Big Book in plain English.An added bonus is that it has made me read the Big Book again a number of years after first reading it. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it especially if you are relatively new to the 12 step programme of AA when the mass of information that is supplied by the Fellowship can be quite bewildering.

I personally found the comment helpful. I would also like to recommend a recent jewel I found, An Encounter With A Prophet. In my humble opinion this book had to be written by someone in recovery and really good recovery!

I just purchased my second copy of this book. I gave my first copy to a woman I have sponsored for 10 years. I have learned so much from this book about how to actually work the steps. Comments are tied to passages in the Big Book explaining the meaning and page and sentence links tie ideas together throughout the book. This must have been an incredible amount of work to put this book together. I especially liked reading the first edition stories. While my first copy was worth the work it took to read it, my new copy has all the typos fixed and is really much easier to follow.