Two New Books About Women and Alcohol

AA members hold onto your hats. In yesterdays Sunday New York Times Book Review Irin Carmon reviews two new books about women and alcohol. It is an excellent review (see the link below) putting the subject of women and alcohol in perspective and updating some of the research--and lack of reserach--on women and alcohol use and abuse.

The two books she covers are:

DRINK--by Ann Dowsett Johnston and

HER BEST KEPT SECRET--by Gabrielle Glaser

Carmon recommends both books but also hold the writers up for a lack of complete analysis--Johnston tends to blame increasing alcohol abuse on women's liberation and Glaser for use of extreme language claiming an "epidemic". But for us in recovery the bad news is that Carmon pulls out only the most inflammatory and ungrounded info about early AA and makes the case that AA does not support women.

Glaser uses the chapter "To Wives" from the Big Book as her example, completely ignoring the history of that book and especially the background of that specific chapter. Glaser never mentions Marty Mann and all of the work on women's recovery and Carmon doesn't call her out on that serious omission.

You are likely to cringe when you read the last paragraphs of the review where Carmon quotes this lazy but provocative excerpt from Glaser including this quote, "Women have been getting raped since AA started."

I'm grateful for both of these books to open the discussion and even debate about women and alcohol but really, where is the journalistic integrity and where is the balance?

Here is the link to yesterdays review of both books. What do you think:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/books/review/drink-and-her-best-kept-secret.html?smid=pl-share