Bill W.
A Biography of Alcoholics Anonymous Cofounder Bill Wilson
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3.8 • 8 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
When Bill Wilson, with his friend Dr. Bob Smith, founded Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935, his hope was that AA would become a safe haven for those who suffered from this disease. Thirty years after his death, AA continues to help millions of alcoholics recover from what had been commonly regarded as a hopeless addiction. Still, while Wilson was a visionary for millions, he was no saint. After cofounding Alcoholics Anonymous, he stayed sober for over thirty-five years, helping countless thousands rebuild their lives. But at the same time, Wilson suffered form debilitating bouts of clinical depression, was a womanizer, and experimented with LSD.
Francis Hartigan, the former secretary and confidant to Wilson's wife, Lois, has exhaustively researched his subject, writing with a complete insider's knowledge. Drawing on extensive interviews with Lois Wilson and scores of early members of AA, he fully explores Wilson's organizational genius, his devotion to the cause, and almost martyr-like selflessness. That Wilson, like all of us, had to struggle with his own personal demons makes this biography all the more moving and inspirational. Hartigan reveals the story of Wilson's life to be as humorous, horrific, and powerful as any of the AA vignettes told daily around the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bill Wilson (1895-1971), the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, never saw himself as a saint. In a biography that is admiring without being hagiographic, first-time author Hartigan, one-time assistant to Bill's wife, Lois, reveals a man whose accomplishments seem all the more extraordinary because his demons were so strong. A depressive, a chronic womanizer, a man who could not quit smoking even as he choked to death from emphysema, Wilson was, according to Hartigan, motivated by real spiritual sincerity and purity of purpose when it came to AA. At 39, on the edge of death from alcoholism, Wilson was "struck sober" in an incandescent moment when he felt surrounded by divine presence. Inspired by the Oxford Group, a Christian movement that sought to kindle such experiences, the famous 12 steps that Wilson developed led to gradual spiritual transformation. This approach was built not on white light but on Wilson's bone-deep sense that life without a higher power was unmanageable. Wilson was born in a small town in Vermont to parents who divorced and scattered, leaving the boy to be raised by loving grandparents who could not assuage the permanent wound to Wilson's self-esteem. After the death of his high school girlfriend, the handsome, talented Wilson fell into an almost catatonic despair, a foreshadowing of the depression and self-doubt that would descend on him even at the height of his fame. Frank about Wilson's experiments with LSD, religion and psychotherapy, this unofficial bio will do much to help a wide readership appreciate how Wilson exemplified the way in which weakness can lead us to exhibit extraordinary strength.
