Customer Reviews

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

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Five (5) yrs of sobriety and have read volumes of AA & non-AA text. 'Pass It On' is as interesting for the member of AA as it is for regular people.

Great story about a great man, who is very ordinary. Details, dates and pictures tell the story very well and it reads easily. Book provides details/history behind movement, Step development and original players involved with Bill W and the Oxford Group.

Recommended for all AA members. What you'll get out of this book is a complete history of the 'whys' and 'wheres' of AA, explaining, in great detail, the painstaking measures one man took to bring AA to the world.

Won't keep you sober, but it sure does help!

As a recovering alcoholic with a little more than 18 years of sobriety, reading this book gave me an extreme sense of gratitude. It helped me realize the lengths Bill Wilson went to to carry the message of how to recover from the seemingly incurable, life threatening disease of alcoholism.At nearly every step of the way, Bill Wilson was met with skepticism that he was nothing more than a charlatan and huckster. I came away thinking about whether I could have hung in for all of the adversity for a cause such as this. But he did and as a result of this persons work, for the first time in recorded history, literally millions of seemingly hopeless alcoholics are recovering. This is a very powerful book for those interested in the history of how A.A. came to be in existence today

Have read Bill W., Dr Bob and the Oldtimers, Ebby's story, and was pleasantly suprised to find new info and personal stories in this work. Thanks

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.

The book was definitely dated by its language, but I found it enjoyable and full of information. It gave me the desire to find more on this topic.