The Big Book’s Value? PRICELESS –
March 9, 2018 – The Alcoholics Anonymous book has stats most authors only dream of: more than 30 million copies sold. Translated into 67 languages. In 2012, the Library of Congress ranked it No. 10 in its top 25 “Books that Shaped America.” … Now, the original manuscript, lost for decades and containing handwritten notes by Wilson and his friends, will be auctioned off for millions May 5 after almost a year of legal wrangling, Profiles in History auction house announced this week. Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc., the publishing wing of A.A., tried unsuccessfully to halt the auction. When Wilson, a once-successful stockbroker, descended into alcoholism in the 1920s and 30s, addiction was largely regarded as a moral failing, a crime, a sin – or all three. (This was the height of Prohibition, after all.) There were no fancy rehabs, but there were a few hospitals that specialized in the treatment of alcoholics. Wilson found himself in one of them, Towns Hospital in Manhattan, in the fall of 1933.
