• AA Literature
    • A.A. Big Book
      • A.A. Big Book (164 Pages)
      • Big Book Stories Edition 1
      • Big Book Stories Edition 2
    • A.A. Preamble
    • Singleness of Purpose
    • A.A. 12 Steps
    • A.A. 12 Traditions
    • A.A. 12 Concepts
    • 12 Traditions Checklist
    • 9th Step Promises (Pg 83/84)
    • The Serenity Prayer
    • Principles Of The Program
    • I Am Responsible
    • The Page Of Prayers
  • A.A. History
    • The Emmanuel Movement
    • The Washingtonians
    • Magazine & Newspaper Articles
    • Narrative Of A.A. Timeline
    • Timelines In A.A. History
    • Manuscript Of A.A. World History – Bob P.
    • Place And Things In AA History
    • Who’s Who In A.A. History
    • Big Book Story Authors
    • Writings Of A.A. Members
  • Influential Books
    • A.A. Big Book (164 Pages)
    • Big Book Stories Edition 1
    • Big Book Stories Edition 2
    • Mel B’s Library
    • Dick B.’s Library
    • The Greatest Thing In The World
    • The Varieties Of Religious Experiences
    • In His Steps
    • As A Man Thinketh
    • When Man Listens
    • John Barleycorn
    • The Confessions Of Saint Augustine (13 Books)
    • Religion, Clergy & A.A.
  • Free Stuff
    • Free Audiobooks & Speaker Tapes
    • Videos Of Bill Wilson
    • The PDF Project (1000+ PDF’s)
    • Free AA Apps For iPhone
    • Free AA Apps For Android
    • Free 12 Step Toolkit App
  • 10-Days To Sobriety
  • AA Literature
    • A.A. Big Book
      • A.A. Big Book (164 Pages)
      • Big Book Stories Edition 1
      • Big Book Stories Edition 2
    • A.A. Preamble
    • Singleness of Purpose
    • A.A. 12 Steps
    • A.A. 12 Traditions
    • A.A. 12 Concepts
    • 12 Traditions Checklist
    • 9th Step Promises (Pg 83/84)
    • The Serenity Prayer
    • Principles Of The Program
    • I Am Responsible
    • The Page Of Prayers
  • A.A. History
    • The Emmanuel Movement
    • The Washingtonians
    • Magazine & Newspaper Articles
    • Narrative Of A.A. Timeline
    • Timelines In A.A. History
    • Manuscript Of A.A. World History – Bob P.
    • Place And Things In AA History
    • Who’s Who In A.A. History
    • Big Book Story Authors
    • Writings Of A.A. Members
  • Influential Books
    • A.A. Big Book (164 Pages)
    • Big Book Stories Edition 1
    • Big Book Stories Edition 2
    • Mel B’s Library
    • Dick B.’s Library
    • The Greatest Thing In The World
    • The Varieties Of Religious Experiences
    • In His Steps
    • As A Man Thinketh
    • When Man Listens
    • John Barleycorn
    • The Confessions Of Saint Augustine (13 Books)
    • Religion, Clergy & A.A.
  • Free Stuff
    • Free Audiobooks & Speaker Tapes
    • Videos Of Bill Wilson
    • The PDF Project (1000+ PDF’s)
    • Free AA Apps For iPhone
    • Free AA Apps For Android
    • Free 12 Step Toolkit App
  • 10-Days To Sobriety
home/Alcoholics Anonymous/Research & Study

A.A. History Lovers

3420 views 0 aa

The leading international webgroup for the study of Alcoholics Anonymous history and archives.

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAHistoryLovers/

Winchester Cathedral

Winchester Cathedral, where Bill W. had a profound experience of the feeling of the divine presence in 1918 ? and then turned his back on it and walked away.

The AA History Lovers webgroup has over 2,500 members from all over the earth including the United States, Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Mexico, Belgium, the Scandinavian countries, Australia, and India, to name just a few of these far flung lands. But the actual number of people who are affected by the webgroup is far higher. There are many who read the group’s postings on a regular basis without having signed up on the membership list, since anyone who has a computer and access to the internet can read all the messages. Enrolling on the membership list is only necessary for posting messages. And many of the group’s readers forward some of the postings on to their friends, or reprint their contents in local AA newsletters, or put up copies on their own websites.

95% of the people who have authored the best books on AA history are members of the AAHistoryLovers, as are 95% of the top archivists, rare book specialists and other historical researchers in the field. In addition, over the years, the Archivists at the Alcoholics Anonymous GSO in New York City have also regularly been a member of the AAHistoryLovers, although because of their position, they have usually refrained from public comments on the postings.

So the AAHistoryLovers has gained a reputation as the most dependable single source of historical information about AA. If you want to find out what the real experts say — the most knowledgeable and competent scholars and researchers in the field — the AAHistoryLovers will give you the best-documented and most up-to-date information known. And it will also be one of the first places to publish news about newly discovered documents and facts, along with notices of the most recent publications on AA history.

One of the world’s largest archives
of AA historical material

The collected messages of the AAHistoryLovers forms one of the largest single bodies of good AA historical material gathered in one place, an incredible accomplishment carried out by a number of the world’s best AA historians and archivists. All the messages from the first eleven years (2002-2012) have now been gathered together into computer files which can either be downloaded or read on line.

Here at the end of 2012 we are getting close to the end of the line, in terms of people who knew the original founders of AA at first hand. In fact, the AAHL was started in large part as a last-ditch effort to glean as much information as possible from these people while we could still sit at their feet and listen to them talk, and ask questions. The next generation will be forced to rely solely on documents and audio recordings.


(From the administrator of silkworth.net, Jim M. The files below are very large files. The links below are all the messages from AA History Lovers from 2002 thru 2012. When you access any of the files below, USE YOUR BROWSERS SEARCH FEATURE in Text, PDF, MS Word and HTML to locate information you seek. Use KEY WORDS such as, phrases, titles, parts of titles, persons name, etc . . . to locate that which you seek. 
Please be patient while any of the pages below load as they are very large files.)
Inside Winchester Cathedral

Standing in the sunlight of the spirit in Winchester Cathedral and
feeling what Bill Wilson experienced back in 1918 when he was a
young artillery officer: the primordial awareness of the sacred and
the holy, that sense of contact with a fourth dimension of existence
which lay at the heart of his spirituality.

TWELFTH ANNIVERSARY
March 16, 2000 – March 16, 2012

The group was originally started by Nancy Olson under the name AAHistoryBuffs, see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AAHistoryBuffs/. March 16, 2000 was the founding date given in the left-hand column of the home page. The first still-surviving messages were put on their Message Board on March 21, 2000. (Nancy went through both the AAHB and the AAHL on occasion, deleting messages that were on trivial topics, or simply repeated earlier messages, or were later shown to have gotten their information badly wrong.)

But in Spring 2002, Nancy changed her e-mail to another provider, and then discovered to her horror (a) that the Yahoo group system would not recognize her new e-mail address, and (b) that her old e-mail provider would not give her that old address back. So no one could any longer gain access to the management section of the Buffs, and keep the group operating properly.

So she started the AAHistoryLovers, and then she — along with Fiona Dodd, of County Mayo in Ireland, who has done an extraordinary amount of work on the AAHistoryLovers over the years — selected the most important Buffs messages, and copied and pasted them into Lovers messages.

Nancy Olson was the chief aide in charge of alcoholism legislation in the U.S. Senate for ten years (1970-1980), during which time she shepharded the Hughes Act through Congress, along with many other major pieces of federal legislation on alcoholism and drug addiction. Her book about those years, With a Lot of Help from Our Friends: The Politics of Alcoholism, is still the major historical account of this decade, which ranks up with the prohibition era as one of the two most important periods of alcoholism legislation in American history. For an account of her long and adventurous life, see:

1951-55 secretary and aide to Mortimer J. Adler, who was the famous co-editor of the Chicago Great Books series.

Actress at the Pasadena Playhouse, traveling the Caribbean with a British banker, then entering the A.A. program in 1965. Then back in Chicago in August of 1968, while serving as a volunteer for the Democratic National Committee at the Democratic National Convention, she met Senator Harold Hughes from Iowa and eventually became his chief aide for alcoholism legislation. In 1970 she gave it all up, and left Washington D.C. to become a nun. She had to give this up when her legs became crippled by multiple sclerosis — but then she was almost completely cured by a miracle at one of the great healing shrines in Europe, and was able to go back to Washington, where she had a very active and successful career as a legislative analyst and lobbyist until her retirement in 1995.

The Golden Apples of the Sun: Her first AA meeting and how she first met Senator Harold Hughes.

Nancy remembers Mortimer Adler.

Our present work on
archiving all this material

A program called PG Offline has just been used to download all of the first eleven years of AAHistoryLovers messages, from 2002 to 2012. They were downloaded in tabular form as Microsoft Access data files. Mail merge was then used to transfer this tabular data to continuous MS Word files, producing ten MS Word documents, one per year, each one around a thousand or so pages long.

Unfortunately, these messages were still full of the kind of web page coding used for HTML files and other similar online documents, to such a point that many sections were nearly totally unreadable. So another program, called Detagger, then had to be used to strip all of this HTML coding out of the messages.

These documents are still extremely lengthy, and sometimes have the lines broken up in ways that makes them difficult to read. This is the result of literally tens of thousands of extraneous line breaks, which will have to be removed by hand. But once this has been done, these documents should be only about half as long in terms of number of pages, and far easier to read.

The important thing is that they have now been preserved for posterity in a form that will be useful to those future generations. I earnestly hope that the major AA archives all around the world will download these files and store them on a CD disk or some other permanent storage device, to help make sure that later centuries will still be able to read and use this material.

G.C., moderator of the AAHL
January 21, 2013


(All of the above information was presented by Glenn C., Moderator of the Yahoo Group, AA History Lovers. All of the above that has been reprinted here is from the Web site of The Hindsfoot Foundation.)

Click the message number to open the relevant PDF file or download using the required format. The files are massive in size, please give them some time to load if you are on a slow Internet connection.

Tags:aaalcoholics anonymous12 concepts
Attached Files
#
File Type
File Size
Download
1 .pdf 6.89 MB 2002 Messages 1 – 751
2 .pdf 10.63 MB 2003 Messages 753-1574
3 .pdf 5.79 MB 2004 Messages 1575 2117
4 .pdf 4.21 MB 2005 Messages 2118-3001
5 .pdf 4.82 MB 2006 Messages 3002-3975
6 .pdf 3.80 MB 2007 Messages 3976-4774
7 .pdf 7.13 MB 2008 Messages 4775-5452
8 .pdf 4.06 MB 2009 Messages 5453-6184
9 .pdf 8.95 MB 2010 Messages 6185-7089
10 .pdf 4.86 MB 2011 Messages 7090-8081
11 .pdf 4.19 MB 2012 Messages 8082-8956
12 .txt 3.67 MB 2002 Messages 1-751 (Text)
13 .txt 5.73 MB 2003 Messages 753-1574 (Text)
14 .txt 2.50 MB 2004 Messages 1575-2117 (Text)
15 .txt 2.30 MB 2005 Messages 2118-3001 (Text)
16 .txt 2.39 MB 2006 Messages 3002-3975 (Text)
17 .txt 1.97 MB 2007 Messages 3976-4774 (Text)
18 .txt 3.26 MB 2008 Messages 4775-5452 (Text)
19 .txt 1.94 MB 2009 Messages 5453-6184 (Text)
20 .txt 4.39 MB 2010 Messages 6185-7089 (Text)
21 .txt 2.36 MB 2011 Messages 7090-8081 (Text)
22 .txt 2.02 MB 2012 Messages 8082-8956 (Text)

Was this helpful?

Yes  No
Related Articles
  • Stepping Stones News
  • History Of International AA Women’s Conference – History Of The IAAWC (Formerly Known As The NAAWC)
  • International Lawyers In Alcoholics Anonymous – History – Philosophy.
  • The Washington Group : Foundations, 1936-1941
  • Early A.A. History In Virginia & Washington DC – The Boys Of ’39
  • A History Of The Clear Creek Club – At The Creek, Clear Creek Club, Seabrook TX.
Leave A Comment Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Popular Articles
  • Tre Legati – Recupero, Unita, Servizio (Italian)
  • No Information
  • Serenity Nooners Group, Panama City, Florida – Established On November 15, 1989
  • A.A. Around The World Call Up – I
  • Sandy Beach, Tampa Florida, 7th December 2006, Thursday Night Speaker Las Vegas Nevada
KB Categories
  • Audio Books 0
    • AA Speaker Bill W. 100
    • Joe & Charlie 34
    • Videos 15
    • International Conventions – 2015 184
    • AA Speaker Chuck C. 111
    • AA Big Book Audiobook 14
    • AA Speakers Clergy 220
    • AA Speakers Doctor's 129
    • Sandy B. – Saturday Morning Live 12
    • AA Speaker Sandy B. 74
    • AA Assorted Speakers 195
  • A.A. History – General 27
  • Literature 12
    • Big Book 18
    • A.A. Prayers 10
    • Big Book Stories Edition 1 29
    • Big Book Stories Edition 2 40
    • The Big Book Concordance 27
    • The Original Manuscript Of AA. 16
    • The First A.A. Pamphlet 8
  • Al-Anon 14
  • The PDF Project (1000+ PDF's 1
    • The Big Book (179 Articles 6
    • Bill W. (172 Articles 4
    • Dr. Bob (24 Articles 1
    • General Service Conference (157 Articles 6
    • Grapevine (51 Articles 5
    • History (437 Articles 52
  • Grapevine Articles 4
    • Grapevine Articles – Interviews 6
    • Grapevine Reproduction 8
    • Additional A.A. Grapevine Articles 20
    • Big Book Updates 13
    • Other Grapevine Articles 33
  • The History Of Alcoholics Anonymous 6
  • Other Articles 41
    • Printed Book Reviews 26
    • Religion, Clergy & A.A. 108
  • The Global Map 3
    • General 3
    • Australia (Oceania 0
      • New Caledonia 1
      • Niue 1
      • Palau 1
      • Australia 3
      • Papua New Guinea 1
      • American Samoa 1
      • Pitcairn Islands 1
      • Cook Islands 1
      • Solomon Islands 1
      • Coral Sea Islands 1
      • Tongi 1
      • Federated States Of Micronesia 1
      • Tokelau 1
      • Fiji 1
      • Tuvalu 1
      • French Polynesia 1
      • Vanuatu 1
      • Guam 1
      • Western Samoa 1
      • Kiribati 1
      • Wallis And Futuna Islands 1
      • Marshall Islands 1
      • Northern Mariana Islands 1
      • New Zealand 1
      • Nauru 1
    • Asia 0
      • Maldives 1
      • Mongolia 1
      • North Korea 1
      • Nepal 1
      • Pakistan 1
      • Bangladesh 1
      • Philippines 1
      • Burma 1
      • Russia 2
      • Bhutan 1
      • South Korea 1
      • China 1
      • Sri Lanka 1
      • Hong Kong 1
      • Thailand 1
      • India 1
      • Taiwan 1
      • Indonesia 1
      • Vietnam 1
      • Japan 1
      • Kazakhstan 1
      • Laos 1
      • Malaysia 1
    • Africa 0
      • Ghana, Togo & Benin 1
      • Sudan & Chad 1
      • Guinea-Bissau & The Gambia 1
      • Swaziland & Mozambique 1
      • Liberia & Sierra Leone 1
      • Tanzania & D. R. Congo 1
      • Libya & Tunisia 1
      • Uganda & Kenya 1
      • Madagascar 1
      • Malawi & Zimbabwe 1
      • Algeria & Morocco 1
      • Mauritania & Western Sahara 1
      • Angola & Zambia 1
      • Namibia & Botswana 1
      • Burkina Faso & Mali 1
      • Nigeria & Niger 1
      • Cameroon 1
      • Reunion & Mauritius 1
      • Central African Republic & Ethiopia 1
      • Rwanda & Burundi 1
      • Comoro Island & Seychelles 1
      • Saint Helena & Equatorial Guinea 1
      • Congo & Gabon 1
      • Sao Tome & Principe 1
      • Cote d'Ivoire & Guinea 1
      • Senegal & Cape Verde 1
      • Egypt 1
      • Somalia 1
      • Eritrea & Djibouti 1
      • South Africa & Lesotho 1
    • Central America 0
      • Belize 1
      • Costa Rica 1
      • El Salvador 1
      • Guatemala 1
      • Honduras 1
      • Mexico 1
      • Nicaragua 1
      • Panama 1
    • Caribbean 0
      • Bermuda 1
      • Saint Vincent And The Grenadines 1
      • Cuba 1
      • Saba/Saint Eustatius 1
      • Cayman Island 1
      • Saint Kitts And Nevis 1
      • Curacao 1
      • Trinidad And Tobago 1
      • Dominican Republic 1
      • Turks And Caicos 1
      • Dominica 1
      • Virgin Islands 1
      • Grenada 1
      • Guadeloupe 1
      • Haiti 1
      • Anguilla 1
      • Jamaica 1
      • Antiqua 1
      • Margarita 1
      • Aruba 1
      • Martinique 1
      • Bonaire 1
      • Puerto Rico 1
      • Barbados 1
      • Saint Maarten/Saint Martin 1
      • Barbuda 1
      • Saint Barts 1
      • Bahamas 1
      • Saint Lucia 1
    • Middle East 0
      • Bahrain 1
      • United Arab Emirates 1
      • Cyprus 1
      • Yemen 1
      • Iran 1
      • Iraq 1
      • Israel 1
      • Jordan 1
      • Kuwait 1
      • Kyrgyzstan 1
      • Lebanon 1
      • Oman 1
      • Qatar 1
      • Syria 1
      • Arabia 1
      • Saudi Arabia 1
      • Azerbaijan 1
      • Tajikistan 1
      • Armenia 1
      • Turkmenistan 1
      • Afghanistan 1
      • Turkey 1
    • Canada 0
      • New Brunswick 1
      • Newfoundland 1
      • Northwest Territories 1
      • Nova Scotia 1
      • Ontario 18
      • Quebec 1
      • Saskatchewan 1
      • Yukon 1
      • Alberta 1
      • British Columbia 2
      • Manitoba 1
    • South America 0
      • Brazil 1
      • Chile 1
      • Ecuador 1
      • French Guiana (France 1
      • Falkland Islands (UK 1
      • Guyana 1
      • Netherland Antilles (NL 1
      • Peru 1
      • Paraguay 1
      • Suriname 1
      • South Georgia (UK 1
      • Uruguay 1
      • Venezuela 1
      • Aruba (NL 1
      • Argentina 1
      • Bolivia 1
    • United States 0
      • Arizona 1
      • Maine 1
      • Ohio 5
      • Arkansas 1
      • Maryland 3
      • Oklahoma 1
      • California 4
      • Massachusetts 1
      • Oregon 1
      • Colorado 1
      • Michigan 4
      • Pennsylvania 6
      • Connecticut 1
      • Minnesota 2
      • Rhode Island 1
      • Delaware 1
      • Mississippi 1
      • South Carolina 5
      • Florida 28
      • Missouri 1
      • South Dakota 1
      • Georgia 1
      • Montana 1
      • Tennessee 1
      • Hawaii 1
      • Nebraska 1
      • Texas 6
      • Idaho 1
      • Nevada 1
      • Utah 1
      • Illinois 3
      • New Hampshire 1
      • Vermont 1
      • Indiana 1
      • New Jersey 3
      • Virginia/DC 3
      • Iowa 1
      • New Mexico 1
      • Washington 3
      • Kansas 1
      • New York 1
      • West Virginia 1
      • Alabama 1
      • Kentucky 1
      • North Carolina 2
      • Wisconsin 1
      • Alaska 1
      • Louisiana 1
      • North Dakota 1
      • Wyoming 1
    • Europe 0
      • Austria 1
      • Herzegovina 1
      • Russia 2
      • Andorra 1
      • Iceland 1
      • Scotland 2
      • Belgium 1
      • Ireland 1
      • Slovakia 1
      • Bulgaria 1
      • Italy 1
      • Slovenia 1
      • Croatia.html 1
      • Latvia 1
      • Spain 1
      • Cyprus 1
      • Liechtenstein 1
      • Sweden 1
      • Czech Republic 1
      • Lithuania 1
      • Switzerland 1
      • Denmark 1
      • Luxembourg 1
      • Turkey 1
      • Estonia 1
      • Malta 1
      • Ukraine 1
      • England 2
      • Macedonia 1
      • Wales 1
      • Finland 1
      • Monaco 1
      • Yugoslavia 1
      • France 1
      • Netherlands 1
      • Germany 1
      • Norway 1
      • Greece 1
      • Poland 1
      • Gibraltar 1
      • Portugal 1
      • Hungary 1
      • Romania 1
  • The Detroit Pamphlet 4
  • Writings Of A.A. Members 0
    • Lois W. 7
    • Doctor Bob 10
    • Henry G. (Hank P. 2
    • Clarence S. 6
    • Bill D. 2
    • Bill W. 19
      • Let's Ask Bill W. 41
      • Bill W. On The 12 Traditions 16
      • Letters – To Jim Burwell From Bill Wilson 18
      • Letters – To Bill Wilson From Jim Burwell 3
      • Talks At General Service Conferences 31
        • Alcoholic Foundation 4
      • Grapevine Articles Of Bill W. 34
        • Grapevine – 12 Traditions Of A.A. 16
        • Grapevine – 12 Steps Of AA 2
    • Ebby Thacher 2
    • Others 13
      • Letters – To Jim Burwell From Bill Wilson 18
      • Letters – To Bill Wilson From Jim Burwell 3
  • Influential Books 0
    • The Varieties Of Religious Experiences 17
    • As A Man Thinketh 8
    • When Man Listens 6
    • The Confessions Of Saint Augustine 5
      • Book Twelve 34
      • Book Thirteen 40
      • Book One 20
      • Book Two 12
      • Book Three 14
      • Book Four 18
      • Book Five 16
      • Book Six 18
      • Book Seven 23
      • Book Eight 14
      • Book Nine 15
      • Book Ten 45
      • Book Eleven 33
    • Other Books 9
    • John Barleycorn 39
    • Big Book Of AA 21
    • Personal Stories – Edition 1 29
    • Personal Stories – Edition 2 40
    • Mel B.'s Library 56
      • The Four Absolutes 17
    • Dick B.'s Library 128
    • The Greatest Thing In The world 5
    • In His Steps 32
  • Research & Study 14
    • A Narrative Of Timeline Of A.A. History 30
    • The Emmanuel Movement 12
    • Tiebout Papers 6
    • Timelines In A.A. History 14
    • Big Book Story Author's 78
    • AA Growth 135
    • Stepping Stone News 1
    • Timelines Of Historic A.A. Events 1
    • Charlie Bishop Jr. 3
    • Manuscript Of A.A. World History, 1985 – By Bob P. 23
    • Whos's Who In A.A.'s History 23
    • Big Book Changes 1
    • Magazine And Newspaper Articles 149
    • People In A.A.'s History 26
    • A.A. History – News Articles 8
      • Cleveland Plain Dealer 8
    • Place And Things In AA History 13
    • Dr. William Duncan Silkworth M.D. 12
      • Grapevine Articles Of Dr. William Silkworth 5
    • The Washingtonians 31
      • Grapevine Articles Of The Washingtonians 15
    • Gresham's Law And Alcoholics Anonymous 5
AA Anonymity Statement

Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions.

Please respect this and treat in confidence who you see and what you hear.

About Silkworth.net
  • Privacy Policy
  • Legal Disclaimer
  • Contact Us
External Links
  • Free 12 Step Toolkit App
  • Free AA Apple Apps
  • Free AA Android Apps
  • Silkworth’s YouTube Channel
  • Alcoholics Anonymous (AAWS Inc.)
  • AA Grapevine, International Journal of Alcoholics Anonymous
  • Al-Anon Family (Includes Alateen)
Newsletter Subscription





  • © 2020 silkworth.net. All Rights Reserved