Alcoholics Anonymous - The Story of How More Than Six Thousand Men and Women Have Recovered From Alcoholism. Works Publishing Inc. 1942 (Third Printing, June, 1942) of the First Edition. Hard cover with no dust jacket. Slightly larger than the hardcover 'Big Book' one sees today. Dimensions are: 9 1/4" tall, 6" deep, 2" thick. The cover on this book is a much lighter blue, than the dark blue of the current editions of this book. The gilt lettering on the spine of the cover is almost completely faded. There is where to the extremities of the cover, heavy on the bottom tips, and some soiling and scuffing to the cover, along with some non-literate pencil scribblings on the back cover. The edge of the page block is foxed and soiled, probably dust soiling, with a 1/2" x 1/16" (some sort of oil?) stain on top which does not go deep to the page surface. There was a looseness to the binding in front between the flyleaf and the half-title page, which I have attempted to repair with an archival glue. There is still a very slight separation there, but it is tight. In the back there is a slight looseness to the binding, which I have not attempted to repair. Inside the front cover is a half removed 'Pennys' (J.C.?) sales sticker and a bit of soiling. On the first blank page (the fly leaf) is written in blue pencil "Womens' Unit", and below that in a neat blue ball point pen, "Donated to the/Napa State Hospital/by the/San Francisco Fellowship/0f/Alcoholics Anonymous". This page has finger print soiling. The half title page has indentation from the heavy pencil writing on the previous page,and a 3/4" tear from the top. It has soiling too. There is a brown finger print sized stain on the back of the title page, which bleeds through the page, and a bit onto the page behind it. There may be a slight dog-earing to the bottom tips of the pages, but I do not see folded nor creased pages. Within the text of the book, I do not see any previous owner markings, however, there are 9 blank pages in the back of the book, all but two of which have significant heavy pencil scribbling, the nature of which is like that of a person with a pen they are trying to get to write, but again, these scribblings are all in pencil, much of it quite heavy. There is a 1/2" tear on the leading edge of one of these pages. This book appears to have been read and abused and is now a bit of history.  BD25a