Living Recovery ─ Inspirational Moments For 12 Step Living

These words, familiar to recovering people everywhere, describe the challenging realities we must face when we begin recovering from an addiction. And as life goes on there is a tremendous need for meaningful recovery support. Learning to deal with the different stages of growth and the new emotions that surface during the recovery process requires new living skills.

Now all the pamphlets in the bestselling Hazelden Pocket Power series have been collected in this inspirational volume. Living Recovery provides an in-depth look at twenty-two tools for recovery, and offers pragmatic guidance in penetrating, yet easy-to-read reflections on:
-- Accepting Criticism
-- Forgiveness
-- Freedom from Fear
-- Gratitude
-- Great Expectations
-- Honesty
-- Hope
-- Humility
-- Inadequacy
-- Just for Today
-- Letting Go
-- Living the Principles
-- Loneliness
-- Loving Relationships
-- Miracles in Recovery
-- Patience
-- Prayer and Meditation
-- Reaching Out to Others
-- Serenity
-- Surrender
-- Understanding Rejection
-- When Doors Close

So whether you're recovering from addiction or you live or work with someone who is, the principles of Twelve Step living outlined in this book can guarantee a richer, healthier life.

One hundred percent of the net proceeds from the sales of the Random House edition of Hockney's Alphabet will go to the American Friends of AIDS Crisis Trust for AIDS research and services to people with AIDS.

Sir Stephen Spender invited a number of distinguished writers in Britain and America to contribute original texts for an alphabet to be specially drawn by David Hockney, the proceeds of which would benefit AIDS research and services to people with AIDS. The result is this stunning volume of ABCs for grown-ups, a unique anthology of art and literature.

Here are the letters of the alphabet, in David Hockney's inimitable style -- created in a variety of media, including collage and laser copier -- with brief accompanying texts by a dazzling array of world-class writers. Each was assigned to his or her letter by Stephen Spender, who himself contributed the Preface and a poem for the letter A.

Those who love words will delight in the texts, which include, among others:
-- Joyce Carol Oates on B, for birth, the "most profound" of all the Bs.
-- Iris Murdoch on C, a "warm, comforting, friendly" letter.
-- Paul Theroux on D, for death: "An endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art."
-- Gore Vidal on E: "So very like a comb."
-- Norman Mailer on F: "What a compliment you are paying me with that letter."
-- Martin Amis on H, for homosexual: "It asks for courage. It demands courage."
-- Erica Jong on I, a poem, "To the Letter I."
-- Margaret Drabble on L, for laughter: "Do we not, in looking back on friendships, holidays, parties, good times, remember the laughter even when the jokes are forgotten?"
-- Doris Lessing on P, for pumpkin: "One of the joys of autumn."
-- Kazuo Ishiguro on T, for T-bone steak: "A dish renowned for its directness and simplicity."
-- Julian Barnes on U, for unless: "The most sinister word in the English language."
-- John Updike on V, for venereal, but also for victory.
-- Susan Sontag on W, for weather.
-- Anthony Burgess on X, a poem, "An Elegy for X."

Along the way, there is a previously unpublished letter, donated to the project by Mrs. Valerie Eliot, from T. S. Eliot to a young, aspiring writer, and a short essay by Arthur Miller comparing contemporary prejudice against AIDS to the prejudice against tuberculosis he remembers from his childhood.

"The world's Alphabets -- Alpha to Omega," says Stephen Spender in the Preface, "are drums and trumpets, clarion calls, State Funerals, Massed Choirs, Burial and Redemption." Hockney's Alphabet is all that, as well as an enchanting and thought-provoking gift book that will help end the AIDS crisis here and all over the world.


From the Paperback edition.