Page 7 - The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

Hence the two men set to work almost frantically upon
alcoholics arriving in the ward of the Akron City Hospital.
Their very first case, a desperate one, recovered
immediately and became A.A. number three. He never had
another drink. This work at Akron contin-ued through the
summer of 1935. There were many failures, but there was
an occasional heartening success. When the broker
returned to New York in the fall of 1935, the first A.A.
group had actually been formed, though no one realized it
at the time.

A second small group promptly took shape at New York, to
be followed in 1937 with the start of a third at Cleveland.
Besides these, there were scattered alcoholics who had
picked up the basic ideas in Akron or New York who were
trying to form groups in other cities. By late 1937, the
number of members having substantial sobriety time
behind them was sufficient to convince the membership
that a new light had entered the dark world of the
alcoholic.

It was now time, the struggling groups thought, to place
their message and unique experience before the world.
This determination bore fruit in the spring of 1939 by the
publication of this volume. The membership had then
reached about 100 men and women. The fledgling society,
which had been nameless, now began to be called
Alcoholics Anonymous, from the title of its own book. The
flying-blind period ended and A.A. entered a new phase of
its pioneering time.

With the appearance of the new book a great deal began to
happen. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, the noted clergyman,
reviewed it with approval. In the fall of 1939 Fulton
Oursler, then editor of Liberty, printed a piece in his
magazine, called “Alcoholics and God.” This brought a rush
of 800 frantic inquiries into the little New York office