Nan Robertson's New Book Entertains and Instructs.

New York Times reporter Nan Robertson. Her new book, Getting Better: Inside Alcoholics Anonymous, reveals the inner workings of Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the most successful self-help movements of modern times. The book is based on four years of research, which included access to A.A.'s archives and some of the key figures who helped chart the course of the movement, as well as interviews with A.A.'s rank-and-file members. Herself a recovering alcoholic, Robertson won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize-winner for her account of her own near-fatal attack of toxic-shock syndrome.

Elisabeth Sifton is the daughter of American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who wrote the Serenity Prayer. The prayer appeals for grace, courage and wisdom. It has become a mantra of Alcoholics Anonymous, but has appealed to, and been quoted by, many people all over the world. Niebuhr wrote it in 1943. Sifton's new book about her father and the circumstances that led to the prayer is The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War. Sifton is senior vice president of Farrar, Straus and Giroux and has been an editor and book publisher for 40 years.

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