From: "Foreword
to Second Edition"
The spark that
was to flare into the first A.A. group was struck at Akron, Ohio in June 1935,
during a talk between a New York stockbroker and an Akron physician. Six months
earlier, the broker had been relieved of his drink obsession by a sudden
spiritual experience, following a meeting with an alcoholic friend who had been
in contact with the Oxford Groups of that day.
He had also been greatly helped
by the late Dr. William D. Silkworth, a New York specialist in alcoholism who is
now accounted no less than a medical saint by A.A. members, and whose story of the
early days of our Society appears in the next pages.
