The real history of Alcoholics Anonymous and its predecessor organization, Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman's "Oxford Group" cult, is a fascinating epic historical melodrama that has everything a good historical novel could wish for:

• sex,
• violence,
• goose-stepping Nazi soldiers and their beautiful blond women,
• World War II,
• cult religions,
• radical politics,
• ultra-rich multi-millionaires and lavish living in beautiful palaces,
• Christian missionaries with dark-skinned foreign mistresses,
• crazy wet-brained alcoholics,
• kings and queens and princes and princesses, and counts and dukes and lords and earls,
• priests and ministers and doctors and psychiatrists,
• deceitful traitors and brave patriots and cowardly draft-dodgers and two-faced flag-waving chicken-hawks,
• union leaders and union-busters and strike-breakers,
• American fascists spouting hatred of Jews and praise of the Nazis,
• British fascists goose-stepping through the streets of London,
• phony evil lying cult leaders who raved about God while committing despicable crimes,
• insane rabid ultra-right-wing multi-millionaires who preferred Adolf Hitler over President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
• racism,
• bigotry,
• homophobia, homosexuals and lesbians,
• stock market swindlers and the Crash of '29,
• bootleggers and flappers,
• crazy raving lunatics who claimed that God sent them to save the world,
• and even all of the down-and-out drunkards under the bridge.

It has it all. Enjoy.

1. Bill Wilson Writes The Steps
2. Frank Buchman
3. The Religious Tenets and Doctrines of the Buchmanism
4. The Cult Characteristics of the Oxford Groups
5. The First Century Christian Fellowship Campus Crusade in the 1920s
6. Hobnobbing With The Nabobs
7. My God How The Money Rolls In
8. Partying with the Nazi Party
9. The Oxford Group Morphs Into MRA
10. The Years Before the War: Appeasing Hitler, and Apologizing for Hitler
11. Invasion of Poland, WWII starts in Europe
12. A Slogan a Day Keeps The Thinking Away
13. Pearl Harbor, The USA Is In It Now; and You (Not Me) Can Defend America
14. Dodging the Draft
15. Sam Shoemaker Quits
16. What Is Fascism? How Fascist Was Frank Buchman?
17. The War Years: On the Road Again
18. Henry Ford and Anti-Semitism
19. After The War, Trouble With The Catholics
20. Frank Buchman, Anti-Communist, Union-Buster, Spiritual Strike-Breaker
21. Homophobia and Gay-Bashing
22. Partying in a Fairy-Tale Castle
23. Death of a Salesman, Peter Howard Takes Over
24. The Last Hurrah: Up With People
25. Obscurity
26. Bill Wilson Gets Religion (And Drugs) And Sees God
27. Bill and Dr. Bob start A.A.
28. William Birney's interview of Frank Buchman for the New York World Telegraph
29. Reinhold Niebuhr's "Hitler and Buchman" article
30. Rev. Ironside's Sermon On Buchmanism
31. Review of Garth Lean's book, On The Tail of a Comet
32. Footnotes
33. Bibliography