NEW YORK, NY.- It launched the 12-step movement, changed countless lives, and became one of the most influential books of the 20th century. Now, the original working text of Alcoholics Anonymous, complete with extensive handwritten notations and edits by the authors, will be the final lot of The Jim Irsay Collection: Icons of History sale, taking place live July 1, 2026 at Christie's Rockefeller Center. This work is known as “The Big Book,” a testament to the almost sacred value its many readers place in it. This working copy has an estimate of $1,000,000-2,000,000.
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Alcoholics Anonymous: The Big Book
By Bill W.
The foundational recovery text of Alcoholics Anonymous, offering personal stories, guiding principles, and the original Twelve-Step program.
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All of the proceeds of the sale of this important work will be donated to philanthropic causes close to the heart of Jim Irsay, the late philanthropist and owner of the Indianapolis Colts.
Christie's is marking the 250th anniversary of the United States with this The Icons of History sale, a new chapter in what has already been a record-breaking series of auctions of objects from Irsay's meticulously compiled collection.
Jim Irsay's daughters, Carlie Irsay-Gordon, Casey Foyt, and Kalen Jackson, said: “Our dad was passionate and thoughtful when it came to assembling The Jim Irsay Collection. He loved every item he acquired but was asked many times which he would save if he only could save one. His answer was always The Big Book.”
“Our dad understood the struggles countless people everywhere face every day and wanted so badly to bring hope and relief to anyone who was suffering. This manuscript did just that by introducing the 12-step program to the world and saving millions of lives everywhere. As he was fond of saying, its sheer impact on the world makes it one of the most impactful books ever written.”
“He acquired The Big Book to preserve and protect it, but also to continue sharing its knowledge with the world. Now it's time for the next chapter in the life of the book, and we will honor our dad's commitment to helping others by donating 100 percent of the proceeds of its sale to philanthropy that was close to his heart. The new owner of The Big Book will become its steward for the future but also will be providing significant funds to a great cause.”
THE ORIGINAL "WORKING MANUSCRIPT" OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS
WILLIAM GRIFFITH WILSON (“BILL," 1895-1971)
167 pages, 280 x 215 mm. Original multilith-printed typescript, with three pages written in pencil; annotations and revisions by several founders of AA (some by Bill Wilson, but most in the hand of Hank Parkhurst) largely in graphite, green, and red pencil but a few in ink; leaves encapsulated in mylar (lightly browned). Housed in a red cloth binder with morocco lettering piece: “Printer's Copy M[anu]s[cript]." With a presentation leaf from Lois Wilson (Bill's widow) bound in: “I joyfully give this multilith copy of the AA book, one of my most precious possessions, to you, dear Barry, as evidence of my deep gratitude for all you have done for AA, for Al-Anon, & particularly for me ... 1/1/78.”
Estimate: $1,000,000-2,000,000
Overview
This is the working manuscript with authors' notes of Alcoholics Anonymous, the book that set forth the ideas behind the 12-step movement. The Library of Congress has classified Alcoholics Anonymous as one of the 88 “Books That Shaped America,” and, with more than thirty million copies sold, the published work remains one of the most widely-circulated guides to personal transformation and recovery ever published. The work is known as “the Big Book,” a testament to the almost sacred value its many readers place in it. The AA historian, Bill Schaberg notes that “before the book was published there was no concrete formulation of their program of recovery, and, most especially, there were no clearly articulated Twelve Steps that drinkers could follow as a road map for getting and staying sober" (p.11).
The Authors
Bill Wilson, together with a fellow-member and his right-hand Hank Parkhurst, worked through this manuscript, with the urgency of men trying to articulate a life-or-death solution. Across its pages, in handwritten annotations, cross-outs, and marginal suggestions, the formative principles of the Twelve-Step program for alcoholics everywhere were hammered out. These edits reveal a process that is both collaborative and visionary: competing philosophies of spirituality and sobriety collide and are finally resolved into a publishable text.
Bill Wilson (1895-1971), was an American businessman. Alcoholics Anonymous grew out of the collapse of his own life from alcoholism. By 1934 he had lost nearly everything—his career on Wall Street, his reputation, and his health. During what would become his final hospitalization before sobriety, he experienced what he later described as a “white light” moment: a powerful experience that convinced him that a spiritual component was essential to recovery. This was combined with the influence of the Oxford Group, a Christian movement that centered on surrendering one's life to God and going through the steps of moral inventory, confession, and amends. Wilson was also encouraged by his good friend Ebby Thatcher's example of sobriety and guided by Dr. William Silkworth's medical explanation of alcoholism as a combination of physical allergy and mental obsession. Bill would discover that the only thing that kept him sober was trying to help another alcoholic, an insight that crystallized when he met Dr. Bob Smith in Akron in June 1935: their conversation sparked the first successful partnership in recovery. As their small fellowship grew, Bill realized they needed a clear, consistent way to share what was working, which ultimately led to the writing of the “Big Book” and the formal birth of A.A.
Henry Giffen "Hank" Parkhurst (1895–1954) was one of the most influential figures in the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. A charismatic former Standard Oil executive and a gifted organizer, he met Wilson in 1937 after getting sober in the early New York fellowship. He quickly became Wilson's closest collaborator and the driving force behind turning the fledgling movement into something that could reach people beyond a handful of meetings. Working out of his Newark office, Hank pushed for the idea of writing a book, helped form Works Publishing, typed and edited large portions of the manuscript, and coordinated the collection of the personal stories that became the second half of the Big Book. His energy, business instincts, and relentless persuasion were essential to getting the book written, funded, and printed.
The Manuscript
Layered within the manuscript are the traces of competing visions—authorial, editorial, and communal. Some edits soften explicitly religious phrasing; others add lived experience to clarify the fledgling fellowship's methods. The document thus captures the negotiations of a group attempting nothing less than the codification of a new way of life. As an artifact, the manuscript powerfully preserves a genuinely collaborative act of momentous creation. It captures a text in flux—shaped line by line through the contributions, objections, and revisions of a small, committed fellowship. Multiple hands, perspectives, and lived experiences are embedded in its pages, making visible the collective process by which the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous were forged. More than a manuscript, it is the working testament of a small group of people, working in near‑obscurity, together discovering a language and method that millions of people now credit with saving their lives.
The Work in Progress
One of the most striking elements of the working manuscript is that the very directive “you” statements that dominated earlier drafts of the Twelve Steps have evolved into the more measured and accessible “we”. Taking the first two steps as an example, we see that instead of the command to “Admit you are powerless over alcohol—that your life has become unmanageable” and “Come to believe that God could restore you to sanity,” we see in the manuscript:
[We] Admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. (emphasis added)
Notable, too, is that the religious element is toned down in the manuscript; in step three we see that a reference to God is qualified with “as we understand him.” Handwritten notes by Hank Parkhurst at the beginning that
The manuscript opens with the Foreword, in which anonymity—one of AA's foundational principles—is framed as an act of humility and protection. It proceeds into “The Doctor's Opinion,” the now-canonical endorsement by Dr. William Silkworth, whose articulation of alcoholism as both a physical allergy and a mental obsession became an AA doctrine. From there, the pages move into “Bill's Story,” Wilson's frank account of his collapse and redemption, and the seed of what would become a worldwide recovery movement. The mark-ups seen in later chapters—"There Is a Solution," "How It Works," "Into Action," "Working with Others," and more—show the text in active evolution, as the earliest members debated language, argued about tone, and wrestled with how best to describe a spiritual program without drifting into dogma.
The final section, comprising nearly eighty pages of “Personal Stories,” records the experiences of early members, each testimony serving as both narrative and evidence. These accounts are among the earliest written records of recovery as a communal pursuit rather than an isolated struggle.
