Jellinek and the Big Book
Since its first edition in 1939, the basic text of Alcoholics Anonymous known as the “Big Book” has helped millions of men and women recover from alcoholism. It happened to be published in the exact same year E. M. Jellinek and crew would begin their literature review in earnest.
Jellinek’s first encounter with A.A. occurred during a 1939 review of the available alcohol literature through a project funded by a Carnegie Corporation grant—a project that essentially birthed the field of modern alcohol studies. One of the items included in this massive review was the The Big Book, the nickname of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) founder Bill W.’s Alcoholics Anonymous: The story of how more than one hundred men have recovered from alcoholism.
Jellinek wrote the abstract for the Classified Abstract Archive of the Alcohol Literature (CAAAL), which grew into a collection of approximately 20,000 abstracts printed on McBee sorting cards that were punched (around the edges) according to subject codes listed in the CAAAL Manual.
Jellinek’s first reflections were published in AA Today.
One day that year, I found on my desk a book with a yellow and red dust cover. Its title was ‘Alcoholics Anonymous.’ With a sigh, I picked it up and said to myself: ‘some more crank stuff.’ But I hardly read a few pages when I realized that I had one of the precious gems before me.
Jellinek’s resulting description of the central thesis of the book is that the solution to alcohol addiction “is a deep and effective spiritual experience which revolutionizes [one’s] whole attitude toward life.”
Jellinek invited Bill W. to speak at the very first session of the Summer School, held at Yale in 1943 (see listing on page 4 of the 1943 SSAS program brochure). It established the tradition of bringing members of the larger community (including Alcoholics Anonymous, alcohol beverage industry representatives, clergy, criminal justice, education, medicine, Women’s Christian Temperance Union, etc.) under one roof along with alcohol researchers.
The lectures were first published as Abridged Lectures of the First (1943) Summer Course on Alcohol Studies at Yale University.
Bill Wilson also presented at the second SSAS, where all of the lectures were recorded, and all but four were edited and compiled into Alcohol, Science and Society including lectures and the discussions that followed them in a single volume. His lecture in the collection is #29, entitled The Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous attributed per the group’s custom of anonymity to “W.W. (one of the founders).”