Writing the Big Book presents a robust and vivid picture of how early A.A. operated and grew along with a vast amount of previously unreported details about the cast of colorful characters who made that group so successful.

William Schaberg is a scholar and rare book dealer based in Fairfield, Connecticut. His interest in the history of ideas led him to amass a large collection of first edition philosophy texts and inspired his first scholarly work, The Nietzsche Canon: A Publication History and Bibliography (University of Chicago Press, 1995).