From the inside jacket cover... This book attempts to give a portrait of Dr. Bob as full-scale and balanced as possible--for the most part, in the words of those who knew him personally. The youngster who grew up in Vermont of the late 19th century became a hard-drinking college boy, then a medical student fighting the onset of of his own alcoholism, a respected physician, a loving but increasingly unreliable family man, and at last a desperately ill drunk, without hope until he met a stockbroker from New York--Bill W., who urgently needed a fellow alcoholic to help him maintain his own sobriety.